Not true, I grew up in Barnsley, left school with GCSEs and never progressed to further education. I am in a senior position with a UK high street bank working in London having worked bloody hard to progress. As an aside my boss is from Whitby and has similar educational profile, you will find a similar mix of education levels in other retail banks where experience and attitude is as important as education To support Tomfuns comments I get nowhere near these levels of bonuses that are being discussed despite being being at a senior level, if I was in the investment bank rather than retail (normal everyday banking) the story would be very different no doubt.
Cba - really? So come on tell me how, working up to 50 hrs per week (contracted for 35), meeting my targets, is cba? My philosophy on that was that I was reasonably well remunerated and hence didn't see the need for 'bonuses' And yes my contract did state 35hrs min but had to work to get the job done........ Oh I nearly forgot as well I had to be transferred from Leeds to Birmingham in the process
I thought we were talking about the banks such as Goldman Sachs etc. plus the investment arms of the others. I know all about the Hight street banks, my cousin is an area manager for one of them and she went to Priory , it is the investment bankers that this thread was about, well so I thought and all my comments have been aimed at that sector. Sorry if I have been wrong about which banks we were talking about, but seeing as it is the investment side of banking that gets these big bonuses, then I may have wrongly assumed that is what we were talking about. Sorry if I have caused any offence to anyone
They are getting 100k to do their job, why should they get a cut, and if like reps they get a bonus on performance then ok but not 200 per cent The guy would get 100kwage and 200 k bonus. In these hard times when the government is Benefit bashing and food banks it seems a lot unfair, particularly when they created most of it.
No offence taken, skin is fairly thick on this now. It goes back to tomfuns point of all get tarred with the same brush by the media etc. It is teh investment guys that get these type of bonuses but not sure that is portrayed as so by the media.
I know which parts of the banking world are the bad ones mate. I cannot understand why they think they are entitled to obscene amounts of money, for doing their job, when they have already been pain for doing it ? I know there are other jobs that get stupid money too, like bloody footballers etc. but these have never caused as much trouble as the investment arms of the banks. They still seem to be untouchable, I know there have been a couple of these "traders" that have been prosecuted, but how many are still collecting their bonuses when the ordinary folk have bailed them out ?
- You've got to ask youself why are they getting paid that much in the first place. OHH... TO DO THEIR JOB!!! My point being they are expected to make large returns due to their large salaries, so why be rewarded for doing what your paid to do. Bankers Bonuses are scandalous and the whole system is corrupt! The country's been in disarray since recession hit in 2007 and still the fat-cat bankers get these huge bonuses, while the working class have to make compromises to pay there bill's !!!
The one thing I don't get is why the idea of breaking away the retail section of the big banks from their investments arms seems to have gone away. That seemed to me to be a sensible idea. Then if the investment bank failed because of bad decisions, it failed - goodbye. I am sure there is a good reason why it is still not practical to let such a failure happen because of the knock on effect but am not convinced that I fully understand it.
Who do you want working for your company? The best in the industry. How do you attract them to your company? Pay them large sums of money. What happens if you take away their bonuses? They leave and you can't attract similarly skilled employees. The revenue lost makes the withdrawn bonuses look incredibly insignificant. Banks and other large companies spend a lot of money benchmarking salaries/bonuses/incentives against similar companies. How it's decided how much employees get paid is a very complex process. The Remuneration Committee need the approval of shareholders so have to be able justify the employee salary packages (it's their dividend payments that are used to remunerate them). No one has more interest in the long term fortunes of the bank/company than the shareholders and they agree to these large sums of money being paid out. Why? For the reasons I explained above. Were you a shareholder, you may well vote against the proposed pay structures but you'd be out voted by other shareholders who understand why they get paid how much they do. That said, there's a currently a big shift away from bonuses based on percentage of salary, towards Long Term Incentive Plans. I wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, banker's bonuses are reduced in favour of share or share option rewards, particularly because of the incentives associated with Employee Shareholder Status, which has just been brought in.
Exactly! I was a banker for 10 years in the UK and my biggest bonus was a couple of grand, and that was after a truly exceptional year (my team of 3 made net income of over 1 million pounds). Most front-line bankers, particularly the tellers start on minimum wage. So, please, don't tar all bankers with the same brush. It's only the investment bankers and the very top managers of the retail banks that get the obscene bonuses.
