December 04, 2009

AFTER more than a year of strife and having incurred almost unanimous wrath from every quarter of the UK, the cream of the banking industry still appears not to have got the message. The entire board of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is said to be considering resigning over government plans to limit the bonuses it pays to some of its staff.

Having been bailed out to the extent that taxpayers now own 84% of its assets, the bank’s directors should have had the commonsense to realise that shelling out something like £1.5billion in bonus payments to its already well-remunerated staff was not going to impress millions of people whose bonus this year comprised of holding on to their jobs.