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And to see this in The Guardian!

\”In a way bankers are Marx\’s dream, it\’s the workers getting the fruits of their labours. It\’s funny that the left is usually angry at shareholders, for taking money out of companies and thereby bringing down workers\’ salaries. Yet with the banks they want shareholders to press the banks to do exactly that, and curb pay.

12 thoughts on “And to see this in The Guardian!”

  1. Banking is the last bastion of socialism – the only remaining profession in which you get to screw both the owners and the customers.

    Though I think it’s funny that in Frankfurt the whorehouses are all next to the banks, since both house professionals who get paid by their clients to screw their clients.

  2. I’ve also wondered whether some of the bank bashers in the unions (e.g. Barber, Derek Simpson, that Leo bloke) would object to their own members receiving large bonuses linked to their performance. Would they say no?

    I realise the members of that union would no longer require the services of Mr Barber or Simpson so they’d be out of a job. But what would the members say?

  3. Adrian, you answered your own question.

    The union bosses hate genuinely performance-related pay, because the unions are no longer needed.

    This is another reason why the unions hate having useless employees sacked – it is the useless ones that need the unions most.

  4. Yes, Richard, it is a rhetorical question.

    I would just want to see them squirm in effectively admitting how much their agenda is political and how little it is about truly advancing the interests of their members.

    It would be fun to watch them admit how hard they would fight against the possibility of their members becoming millionaires.

  5. Slightly off topic, but does anyone here know what rule of thumb banks generally apply in calculating their bonus pools? I seem to remember coming across an (obviously approximate) figure of 40% of net profits somewhere in the FT but I can’t now trace the reference.

  6. Churm, are you talking about profit related pay? Bonuses can be paid even when a company makes a loss – they are based on individual or team targets being met in some cases at least, rather than the company being profitable.

  7. Martin, no, he’s talking about how the size of the POOLS is calculated, not the individual bonuses. Unfortunately I can’t help, have a related question though: a lot of the big IBs used to be partnerships until relatively recently. So without any shareholders at all to pay, how progressive! If they were still partnerships, would we be seeing even bigger ‘banker megabucks’ headlines?

    Common sense says yes – in which case lefties should be glad the banks abandoned an even more cooperative-style setup, for at least our pension pots now get a sniff of their profits – but I’m not sure and would love to hear a more informed answer. My understanding is a big chunk of remuneration is often in shares (and even options?) in the bank, and obviously that wouldn’t be possible in a partnership.

  8. Just that every bonus I have had, the company was making a loss. Do banks operate differently then, including making a bonus pool based on profit, paying bonuses then declaring a loss (RBS)?

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