nice cash bonus!
The shadow chancellor George Osborne was greeted with howls of derision today as he called upon the UK’s high street banks to clampdown on big bonuses and instead to make the cash available to businesses to help people keep their jobs.
Osborne said he was talking about “emergency measures this Christmas” when he made the statement, “Let’s end the big cash bonuses. If there’s spare cash at the bank it should be lent out to small businesses, medium businesses, to help people keep their jobs. This is all about dealing with the ongoing recession.”
Osborne stressed his aim was to open fresh credit lines for struggling businesses. The Tories reckon that reining in cash bonuses would free about £10billion of desperately-needed loans.
Predictably his stance infuriated bankers and a member of the cabinet denounced it as ‘populism’, but then surely that is what politics is all about. City brokers BGC Partners’ David Bulk said, “It is profoundly wrong. The idea is supposed to be a vote winner, but it lacks practicality. It is far too rigid if he wants London to maintain its presence at the top of the financial tree. We need a sensible bonus culture, but not this. He is completely and totally wrong.”
Another city banker who chose not to be named claimed; “It’s all just a political game because the man on the street wants to bash bankers.” So at least one banker understands how the general public feel about the banking bonus culture, even if he fails to grasp it fully.
The Treasury Chief Secretary Liam Byrne said: “We have already introduced the toughest bank remuneration policy in the world. Banning all bonuses for retail banks is unworkable but we are presently negotiating with RBS and Lloyds on the payment of the 2009 bonuses.”
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