bonus or not

[head clansman]

Hi all

well what do you all think, banks do they justisfy their 1,000,0000,000,000 billion pound bonus think that how many zero there are in a billion don't suppose i 'll ever find out for sure on my bank statement , i wish .hc

 

[MikeG.]

1,000,0000,000,000 billion pound bonus
think that how many zero there are in a billion

Nope......that's 3 too many zeros! You would have been right 30 years ago in England, but not the rest of the world. Our billion used to be a million million, now, like everyone else, it is a thousand million........10 to the power 9...........or 1 followed by 9 noughts.

Mike

.......its still a lot of money!!

 

[Jake]

1,000,0000,000,000 billion pound bonus
think that how many zero there are in a billion

Nope......that's 3 too many zeros! You would have been right 30 years ago in England, but not the rest of the world. Our billion used to be a million million, now, like everyone else, it is a thousand million........10 to the power 9...........or 1 followed by 9 noughts.

Mike

.......its still a lot of money!!

To be even more precise, it is 4 too many, but it is still a lot of money.

 

[head clansman]

Hi all

jake wrote

Nope......that's 3 too many zeros! You would have been right 30 years ago in england.

well that about right for me then , i am an old geezer . so do they deserve it? hc

 

[Jenx]

Only If I do too :wink:

 

[head clansman]

Hi all

jake said

Nope......that's 3 too many zeros! You would have been right 30 years ago in England.

well thats about right for me then as i'm an old geezer any way .

mike says

.......its still a lot of money

so do they deserve it, seeing it is on top of their salaries .hc

 

[paulm]

I think you might find that whether they deserve it or not isn't the issue.

Bonuses like that are usually contractual, if you achieve x,y or z you get paid however much........

So may well be little if any discretionary element invoved, likely to be black and white.

If you worked for one, delivered what was in your contract to be delivered and therefore earned your contractual bonus, but the bank declined to pay you despite having money to do so (albeit ours !), in the abscence of any legitimate get out clause for the bank, you would end up suing them for breach of contract wouldn't you ?

Not saying it's morally right, and I'm not a banker, but the perception that payments can be made or not on moral or political grounds likely doesn't come into it in reality........

Cheers, Paul

 

[Paul Chapman]

Trouble is that Old Golden Balls gave them our money, saying there would be strings attached, but then didn't attach any strings. Christ, that bloke's hopeless.........

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[lurker]

Chisel's arguement sounds reasonable except.........

You work on a factory shop floor and your bonus is met by making X number of widgets. In the meantime due to you boss spending the company money on a nice new car and his mistress the company goes bust. You get nothing ( as you are at the back of a long line of creditors)except a small redundancy payment ( & I mean small) and you are out of a job same as lots of widget makers. Other widget making companies then drop the pay of skilled people as there is no need to attract them as there is a surplus.

This is exactly what happened to the banks except we the taxpayer saved them from going bust. And now are expected to let the buggers carry on as they were.

 

[MikeG.]

To be even more precise, it is 4 too many, but it is still a lot of money.

Well spotted Jake! I didn't see the 4 zeros between one pair of commas. Obviously a typo........but I should have gone to spec savers!!

Mike

 

[Chris Knight]

I find the talk of contractual obligations ridiculous considering that all the targets that have supposedly been met are ones that were designed in accordance with the strategies that got us all into trouble. For example - sell x loans to y risky debtors and get z compensation etc.

It's like the Allies rewarding guards at Auschwitz for processing their quota of humanity.

 

[andrewm]

I think you might find that whether they deserve it or not isn't the issue.

Bonuses like that are usually contractual, if you achieve x,y or z you get paid however much........

So may well be little if any discretionary element invoved, likely to be black and white.

Agreed. Except that I would love to know what targets some of these senior executives were given where they can bring the company and the entire banking system to its knees and still meet those targets.

I can understand it for employees in the branch where targets will be based on things like the number of payment protection insurance policies sold but surely senior execs should be at least in some form set targets based on increases in shareholder value - and there has been sod all of that.

Andrew

 

[matt]

Not so many years ago bankers moved part of their salary in to bonus payments because, in those days, bonuses were tax free. I think it remains partially beneficial to use bonus even though these days it is taxed.

So... for many... bonus seems like part of their contractual pay.

My bonus is purely profit related for the business as whole rather than my performance although it is a percentage of my salary therefore does relate in some way to responsibility and performance. That's how the banks should work and the money given to the banks should not have been allowed to feed in to profit for the purposes of calculating bonus.

 

[Sawdust]

I find the talk of contractual obligations ridiculous considering that all the targets that have supposedly been met are ones that were designed in accordance with the strategies that got us all into trouble. For example - sell x loans to y risky debtors and get z compensation etc.

It's like the Allies rewarding guards at Auschwitz for processing their quota of humanity.

Totally agree. The dabate should be whether they get prosecuted or not, not whether they get bonuses

 

[Jake]

I don't agree at all - that metaphor betrays a total loss of perspective.

 

[andrewm]

My bonus is purely profit related for the business as whole rather than my performance although it is a percentage of my salary therefore does relate in some way to responsibility and performance.

And there is nothing wrong with that as it is an incentive for all staff towards generating profit and not just sales. But most of the banks haven't made any profit.

Andrew

 

[paulm]

What I guess I was trying to say, without being interested in defending any of the banks/bankers particularly, is that you can't just re-write things after the event.

If bonuses are contractually payable and the banks have the money to pay them (even if it came from us!), then they legally will have to pay them, and no amount of political grandstanding or "moral" arguments (however justified) after the event will actually make a difference, like it or not.

Just another perspective ..........

Cheers, Paul

 

[Jenx]

Most sane people would surely agree that such bonuses are effectively what one could consider as "obscene", I don't think that would be up for question.

The financial sector that is being debated is perhaps the most guilty ( or at least one of the most ) for perpetuating such irresponsible behaviour,
however - having said that, if any one of us were to get to the 'top of our particular tree' and were then told " You will be remunerated to the tune of £ x, and then further incentified to the tune of £ y, which will then be further enhanced again by share-options and the like, to a futher value of £ z , ... I would doubt many of us would turn it down :?

As has been mentioned .. however 'irresponsible' it may have been.. its 'contractual' ... the agreement by which one agreed to provide one's time and efforts in return for said 'contractual remuneration package'..
no different to anyone else's salary / wage agreement in that sense.
Whether that is completely 'performance related' is effectively irrelevant, however bitter a pill that may be for us to swallow currently.
It was the agreement by which a contract of employment was signed off upon, and thats the bottom line.

If however, these massive 'packages' are awarded by the the very recipients themselves, that then, has the familiar aroma of "Rodent and the Piscatorial finned one" . ( I have my suspicions that perhaps this may well be the case in some, if not the majority of cases )

The old proverb " ye shall reap as ye sow " rings very true... we have encouraged a culture of greed, of internal power-brokering, of 'bugger you jack, cause I'm all right " for many years now.... without wanting to spark a silly political debate, this was Maggie's dream ...
and just like the complete juxtaposition of communism or 'true socialism',... its not workable. It eventually breaks down and fails.
Human nature and its idiosynchracies make it so.
No real mystery there
The cracks are more than beginning to show, and there will be more to come, no doubt.

As the song says... " there may be trouble ahead......"

 

[Peter T]

Someone I saw interviewed on an American news program made, what I thought was, a good point.

Senior bank execs get paid a huge amount of money, and are expected, by the shareholders, to get results.

To get the most spectacular results they must take risks. If they take risks and fail, they get fired.

But in the mean time they have had 4 or 5 years of huge salaries and even huger bonuses, so what do they care. They're set up for life and the taxpayer is left with the bill!!

 

[newt]

I see Barclays are not paying a bonus as their profit is down ( I assume below target). Are their bonus contracts that different from other banks. strangely they seem to be applying some common sense (which in itself is a worry).