Bonuses for Failure

Loss-making Royal Bank of Scotland has awarded bonuses in shares to its top management team worth almost £16m. Since RBS’s £45bn taxpayer bailout during the financial crisis, it has reported nine consecutive years of losses amounting to more than £58bn.

The bank revealed the bonus awards to nine executives an hour after Philip Hammond delivered his budget and said he was “uncertain” as to when the Treasury would be able to sell off any of its 73% stake in the bailed-out bank.

Last month, when RBS reported losses of £8bn for 2016, the bank’s chairman, Sir Howard Davies, had attempted to justify the need to pay bonuses by saying staff should not be penalised for the “sins of the past”. A year ago, the management team were awarded bonuses worth £17.4m.

 Chris Marks, the head of the investment banking operation, NatWest Markets, who was awarded shares of more than £2m. Other awards include £1.8m to Alison Rose, who runs the commercial bank, and £1.2m for Les Matheson, the head of the high street banking business. The pay of Ross McEwan, the RBS chief executive, was disclosed last month at more than £3m for 2016. He was also awarded nearly £3m in shares that he will start to receive from 2021, provided performance criteria are reached. McEwan, has received 512,000 shares as part of a £5.9 million equity payout to nine executives despite slumping £7 billion into the red last year as part of a package of incentive awards.