Good old Fred.

[tut]

Wish I had the chance to have his £650,000 a year pension at the age of 50.

They are all bleating that he should not get it, should do the moral thing and give it up, or give it to the Green Party etc.

What a load of bollocks. Granted that he headed a Mega bank and was responsible for a team of Managers and Investors that could not tell their asses from their elbows, then made the biggest loss in UK Corporate history, but his pension has nothing to do with that, it was part of his Contract and linked to his salary and position, so why should he give it up?

Bonus's yes, they do not deserve those, but they may as well ask him to repay part of his salary as he did not deserve or warrant it.

tut

[ruadh08]

Bet it wasn't a contributory pension scheme!!

Apparently he has three minders all paid for by RBS, and extra security at his home in the Grange.

Meglomaniac, didn't know when to stop.

What happened to the people that did the due diligence on the ambro t/o. Did they miss all the signs, or more likely did Fred choose to ignore it?

[Mikie711]

To bloody right he should give it back, oversaw the conapse of one of the biggest banks and walks away with a pension like that, bollocks he should be made to apologise to every customer and share holder personally then have to work on the cash so he can get the brunt from disgruntled customers........... No sympathy whats so ever.

[tut]

Love stirring it. Question is would you give back your Pension rights that were part of your Contract if you were in his position?

No way. A few months worth of it and I would be out buying a barely used F430 Scuderia Spyder.

tut

[Lazydonkey]

He's actually a really really nice bloke

Well he was when i met him years ago - he used to be a mate of my dads before he went to Clydesdale / austrailia thing.

Think the whole media thing is a witch hunt - RBS make mistakes yes, but IMHO the other banks were all doign the same thing......some just got away with it. He's already paid the ultimate price for the bank failing when he was at the reigns - they can't force him to give up his contractual obligations and if they tried to then mr and mrs tax payer would just have to fork out to fight the court case. Can you imagine any FTSE company wanting Fred on their board? I can't.

Don't get me wrong I hate banks but knowing a few people who work for RBS and who have been taking HUGE bonuses out of the bank for years and no-one seems to mind that.........Likewise I'll be the Chairman of RBS who's name escapes me has a ncie fat pension from RBS.

[foz01]

Brown is the most culpable in all this, and the c*nt has the balls to stand up and belittle the banks for thier failings, he seems to forget the position he was in for the last ten years.

As for Fred, damn straight he should give it back

[renmure]

Think the quid pro quo is that he gets his full pension at 50 rather than 60, but doesn't get the severance payment he would have been entitled to. Things were probably better when the price of failure was the old Roman way of falling on your sword

[Rag_It]

Bet it wasn't a contributory pension scheme!!

Apparently he has three minders all paid for by RBS, and extra security at his home in the Grange.

Meglomaniac, didn't know when to stop.

What happened to the people that did the due diligence on the ambro t/o. Did they miss all the signs, or more likely did Fred choose to ignore it?

Cousin lives on the same street and thinks it is hilarious the attention he is getting! Even in the Grange though someone came and stole his exhaust from his tuscan when he left it in the drive one night!!

[ed]

Im inclinded to agree with you tut. imho i think he did a great job for 8 years and he deserves to be rewarded for that. RBS would still be tiny if it wasnt for him and shareholders and the governement have benefitted greatly over the years due to RBSs prior success. iirc Barclays were lined up to buy ABN on its own and if that had happened Barclays would be down the pan already. He has already waived the right to 15 months pay which in itself is something like 4 mil. The treasury have approached it all wrong though and should have suggested he takes shares rather than cash. All imho, cheers Ed

[kenny]

shareholders and the governement have benefitted greatly over the years due to RBSs prior success

Which shareholders is that?
A lot of honest hard working people have lost a lot of money.

From another thread.

Only consolation is that some of the biggest shareholders will be the Directors and heads etc of RBS, part of their annual bonus package. Hopefully they did not sell them when they were at £3.50. Conversely I sympathise with the average employee who has bought/acquired shares to be hit like that.

I'm glad you do...here's a snippet from the monthly email I get from my IFA:

Once more we have details of a Government bailout of the banks, and strong rumours that RBS will have to be nationalised. It is almost beyond comprehension that RBS can go from a near £10bn profit to a projected £28bn loss including write downs from their purchase of ABN AMRO, in the space of just over twelve months. However, my main sympathy goes to their employees.

When I left school I had the option of joining the Clydesdale Bank or going to college. Given the choice between working a forty hour week, or getting a student grant and spending most of my week in the pub I decided against taking up the job offer, much to my mothers’ chagrin. Her reasoning was simple. Getting in with the bank was a “job for life” and would give me financial security, as well as a cheap mortgage and first class pension. As you can tell my mother never worked in sales, as this wasn’t really pushing my 17 year old buttons, and in fact every “good reason” she came up with had me recoiling in horror.

Anyway, the reason for mentioning this tale from my wayward youth was simply to point out that what my mother said about working for a bank was for years true. I have met a great number of bank employees, and I am amazed by the length of time they have been there given job mobility these days. An extremely high percentage joined straight from school, and in many ways have “lived the dream” that my mother had for me. I was also struck with the remarkable loyalty they felt towards the bank as an employer. I use the past tense, as I know the events of the last year have reduced this to rubble.

Just before Christmas, I met an acquaintance in the supermarket who we will call John. John has worked with RBS since leaving school nearly 35 years ago. Even in the best of times his demeanour can be described as hangdog, but this day he looked like he was about to jump in a chest freezer and close the lid. I, gently, enquired about morale at his work. After an expletive filled tirade that emptied the dairy aisle, he informed me of the situation he and most of his colleagues found themselves in.

It would appear that the financially secure dream that my mother envisaged for me came at a price, and that was buying shares in the bank. As well as the various share option schemes that were offered to staff, it was also the norm for staff to be “encouraged” to buy more using bonus payments etc. In fact failure to do so, was brought up at staff appraisals. This was all well and good when the share price was rising, and meant that a large number of current and ex staff had accumulated significant wealth in RBS shares.

However, the fall in the share price meant that he personally had lost over six figures. Other employees, such as a husband and wife who both worked at the bank from school and put every spare penny they had during their working lives into RBS shares, were in a worse state. In this case, John said, they had lost over £1million.

The reason for recounting this story is not to point out the folly of having so little diversification, but to get to the real focus of his ire. When RBS announced a rights issue last year, according to John, management encouraged staff to take it up, saying “there will never be a better chance to get RBS shares at such a low price”. This encouragement, fuelled also by greed no doubt, meant that some staff decided to re-mortgage their homes to release capital and take up this “once in a lifetime” offer. For those with short memories the rights issue was set at a price of £2 per share. The price when I met John was 45p, as at time of writing it is now 12p.

John’s point which is a good one, is simply this – if someone at RBS was aware of the extent of their difficulties, and in his opinion it beggared belief that no-one was, then surely it was criminal to not disclose this to investors and employees.

A fair point, and one that I would hope we will have answered soon, but don’t bet on it. This and previous Governments’ records in bringing those guilty of financial deception to book is laughable, and a million miles away from the way matters are dealt with in the USA, where failure to disclose information can have senior management led away in chains, as Enron executives can attest.

Very interesting reading IMHO.

I consider myself a capitalist, those with the ability and drive to make a lot of money should be allowed to do so, I hate hearing workshy lefties moan about how it's their money but on this occasion £600k a year on top of the £30mil he has already been paid seems rather obscene while other RBS employees are losing jobs, homes, everything.

[tut]

Would agree with everything else Kenny, but I think pensions are different, and separate from salaries, bonus's etc.

His pension was part of his contract, regardless of his or the Banks performance. Just as mine was when I joined Bristows. When they changed it from final salary to pension fund, although I had no choice, I was informed first.

I still maintain that if any of us were in his position, we would not forfeit our pension.

tut

[Lazydonkey]

But it's not just Fred.

My pal is a risk analyst for RBS and picked up a HUGE bonus last year. Should she pay it back too?

Williams F1 team - they've not done very well under RBS sponsorship - why reward failure? Take that back too.

And the rugby sponsorship too.

Where does it stop? Does the current Chief Exec get any perks? Should we take them all off him too? What about the other directrors and the chairman? Are they getting a pension too? What about the HBOS execs? I'm guessing their pension looks bettr than mine.

The governement have f*cked up. Again. They couldnt sack him so they asked to leave, he negociated a good packaged and someone somewhere in the government okayed it. They are now trying to embarrass someone they've already humiliated and shafted in public. If i was Fred i'd do the same.

Campbell's story rings true with my as a close family friend was a area manager for RBS and has now lost everything. And i mean everything. Taking Fred's pension off him won't bring that back.

As Ed says had the Ambro deal not gone through we could be talkign about Barclays.

[davidbrown]

Two points:

1. No mention made about the months of due dilligence done by KPMG (I think) on ABM Ambro on behalf of RBS and presumably the 2 other banks involved. Why aren't they being called to account.

2. RBS were being criticised before this on their share price. They were under pressure from investors (including our pension funds), press, etc. for not performing as well as other banks. So, in a way, we are all culpable for wanting better and better returns on our shares, investments, with profits endowments, etc. If they didn't perform and keep growing, the share price would drop as investments were moved for better growth/returns. We were happy to pay all their bnuses and salaries as long as they did well for us and no questions asked.

David

[campbell]

I think the attempt to claw back the pension could be seen as wrong / inappropriate etc etc. I certainly agree that for the lowly worker, to be treated like that would be calamitous, so if you scale it up, why treat a high-flyer any different. Retrospectively-Assessed-Performance-related Pensions? Now there's a clever new financial product (oops...).

It's the original decision / agreement reached upon Shred's hiring that needs looked at. It can't be changed...but the finance industry must never make the same mistakes with senior posts again. Ever. These big guys were all in strong negotiating positions when they got into their uber-roles in these uber-corps. And this doesn't just apply in the finance business either. However setting up these watertight "employment" contracts that offer golden parachutes no matter what happens is counter-productive and in no way incentivises these feckers to work hard, play by the rules, or live in fear of making a REALLY BIG MISTAKE.

I too believe reasonably firmly in capitalism, or at least meritocracy where you get out what you put in. But I do not believe the cr*p that "we need to pay big salaries / outrageous packages to attract and retain the best talent". Where has that got industry recently? Down the toilet that's where. Instead of chucking so much cash at these (potential) bosses that they no longer care whether they get it right or wrong (and because their pension pots are nicely protected thankyouverymuch, see original issue above), we should be putting them in on sensible packages that sweat them a bit. In fact bonus-oriented stuff could work well because if you don't achieve, you don't get rewarded. End of.

However there is no perfect system around this. I've been party to the inner workings of Logica's staff salary review scheme (aka lottery) for many years now, and it's full of holes. But so are many others I've heard of. I realise that the "Executive Remuneration Schemes" ("erses" for short...) will operate under different detail rules but the principle remains that it's all about negotiation. If the people on the other side of the table (the "Board and Executive Remuneration Kommittees", let's call them "berks" for short) are too weak-willed or inexperienced to stand up to the Shreds of the world, then we are all doomed anyway.

Campbell

[Clarkie]

The key point with Fred's pension is when it was agreed/paid. Technically the bank was on the verge of becoming insolvent if it hadn't been rescued by HM Gov and £bn's pumped in . On this basis as the same for any other Company in this position, no payments should have been made whether contractual or not. Any cash left is to support as an ongoing concern or for the creditors.

2p worth!