The Government wrecked both our private and our public finances and if Gordon Brown doesn't get a better grip of the banking industry, the IMF will have to do it for him, says Michael Fallon.
‘We are profoundly and, I think I can say, unreservedly, sorry at the turn of events” was how the former chairman of HBOS put it. “I think I can say, unreservedly”? “The turn of events”? Only somebody as deeply immersed in the British establishment as Lord Stevenson of Coddenham could get away with destroying a great British bank, taking £17 billion of taxpayers’ money, and then offering up the kind of shaded apology more appropriate for somebody caught out by a sudden cold snap.
This won’t do, and the parade of hapless bankers in front of the Treasury Committee last week did not give us the answers we need to the crisis in British banking. Instead, we were shown a sorry picture of a sales-driven, deals-driven, bonus-driven culture wholly alien from the banks our fathers knew. >>> By Michael Fallon | Saturday, February 14, 2009
THE (SUNDAY) TELEGRAPH: Lloyds Plan to Pay £120 Million in Bonuses to Staff Threatens New 'Fat Cat' Row
Lloyds banking group has drawn up plans to pay about £120 million in bonuses to staff even as it teeters on the brink of majority state ownership, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
Sources close to Lloyds said the bank had drafted the bonus proposals and was "in consultation" about them with UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the Treasury body that owns a 43 per cent stake in the bank.
The proposed payouts would be distributed among thousands of workers in Lloyds' retail and commercial banking businesses, who received about £150 million in bonus payments last year.
They are likely to inflame the growing row over City bonuses which was stoked last week by The Sunday Telegraph's disclosure that Royal Bank of Scotland, almost 70 per cent of which is owned by the taxpayer, was looking to pay staff as much as £1 billion in bonuses this year.
The disclosure comes as the Government and Lloyds attempt to find a way to pump billions more of taxpayers' money into the troubled bank without the Government being forced to take a majority stake. >>> By Mark Kleinman, Patrick Hennessy and Edmund Conway in Rome | Saturday, February 14, 2009
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