Top 300 RBS executives to share £350m
RBS will unveil pay-outs totalling nearly £350m to its top 300 executives this week, even as deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has warned that he wants to “wring the necks” of bankers who take home “unearned wealth”.
It is understood that RBS’s remuneration report, which is due for release on Friday, will for the first time provide data on the payment of the bank’s “code staff” – all executives who take potentially risky decisions.
Those payments will average £1.2m-£1.5m each, although some staff will receive much more and some much less than the average.
The revelations are sure to stir controversy, with Clegg telling Liberal Democrats yesterday that he wants to make banks “the servants of the economy, not the masters”.
Under the terms of the Merlin deal negotiated with the Treasury, RBS will also reveal the pay of its top five non-board executives. None of them are expected to receive more than chief executive Stephen Hester’s £7.7m pay-out.
The top five officers in question will include all but two of the non-board officers executives named last week as receiving millions in long-term incentive plan pay-outs.
The highest paid will be John Hourican, chief of RBS’s investment banking division, who will take home a number of corporate bonds from the bank in addition to the £2.5m all-share bonus that vested last week.
RBS declined to comment.