Bonus hungry bankers: soon to be a thing of the past?

Rules designed to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis are set to be revealed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Lord Turner, chairman of the Authority plans to unveil a whole new sate of proposals regarding lending as well as measures to restrict banks’ ability to take excessive risks in search or dubious profits and inflated bonuses for those who are liable to cause such a situation to exist in the future.

The basis of the FSA’s proposal will be to disallow banks for passing agreed lending limits during falsely titled ” boom years”, therefore pushing borrowing levels up and at the same time prices, especially in the property market. Instead banks may be required to build up cash reserves in the event of a dramatic downturn, such as the one that the UK and indeed the entire World is experiencing at present

In addition Lord Turner is also expected to stipulate that banks be much more transparent than they were, especially in the year or two before the current credit crunch began. They will require making public clearer information on status of their accounts as well as the percentage of low equity debts that they are carrying. In simpler terms, banks will no longer be allowed to have such a free reign on their lending, and that the management is allowed to pay themselves healthy bonuses on false profits.

Lord Turner has already said his plans will amount to “a revolution”.

A shake-up in the relationship between the FSA, the Bank of England and the Treasury is also set to be proposed.

In February, Lord Turner admitted to committee appointed by the Treasury that the FSA’s failure to anticipate the banking crisis and it severity due in part to the style of regulation that tended to favour a “leave well alone” approach that rapidly unraveled.

A sign that the bonus boom is over for UK bankers, is the announcement from investment bankers, Collins Stewart that they intend to overhauling their bonus payout policy to ensure that a greater link to the overall performance of the company rather than to individual workers. Last year the Bank admitted that they had paid out substantial bonuses to employees in departments that had made profits, despite the company making a pre-tax loss of close to £23million. The broker said it would pay a proportion of bonuses in stock, and defer 20 percent of the cash award until the fourth quarter.

Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland now know by many as the worst banker in UK history who led the bank to a UK record loss of £20 billion is steadfastly refusing to return his bonus and pension package for the meantime.

On the other side of the Atlantic, however public and political pressure is being applied on wobbly insurance giant AIG to demand that their workers return the bonuses they were awarded even though the company had made massive losses and had to be bailed out by public money. The signs are that this pressure is beginning to bear fruit, as at least some of the bonus hungry executives are at least offering to return half of their bonuses.

In the midst of this financial circus, is it any wonder that the man in the street is scratching his head while asking “How much would they have earned if they had made a profit?

• Paying off Debt in 9 Steps pt 1 Throwing away your bills and shredding your credit card payment...
• Bear fund managers warn against short sales Here's an interesting article from Bloomberg. I don't agree with...
• The Key to Blogging for Profit In the last two blog posts, we talked about identifying...

Tags: Bank, Finance, Financial News, FSA, Money, UK Banks