Thursday, Mar 27, 2008
This beggars belief!!!
BBC NEWS: Barclays' executive is paid £21m
The boss of Barclays' investment banking division, Bob Diamond, took home more than £21m ($42m) in pay and bonuses last year, the firm has said.
Posted by titaniccaptain @ 07:36 AM (528 views) Add Comment
19 Comments
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1. Fools said...
the guy has a basic of £250K, and the rest is made from bonus'. £21M is a lot of money no doubt but not when you look at it as % of his groups contribution in a commission orientated structure.
'Bob Diamond contributed about a third towards profits of £7bn and that is not insignificant'
Also titanic, you might want to read the rest of comments added to you HBOS cheif's profiting from price drop thread a couple of days ago.
2. James said...
Anyone see John Terry play last night? Worth his money, is he?
3. sacred contracts said...
Perhaps he can personally bail out some of his mates banks...
4. Blank Cheque said...
Liquidity crisis? What liquidity crisis?
5. mark said...
and look how little tax he paid.....
6. Icarus said...
If your bets win you get £21 million, if they lose you get your salary and severance pay. How can you lose?
7. Pjd123 said...
good luck to the man i say.
8. bystander said...
"and look how little tax he paid....." @mark
Thats because he is a non-dom, but just by being in the UK he contributes hugely to the financial stablility and world wide standing of the UK and more importantly LONDON. Feather their own nests, play by their own rules, and get bailed out by the taxpayer, to whom he has given so very little.
9. Stevie Dee said...
"Oiling the Palms" as well as "Oiling the Cogs" (Central Bankers speak, supposedly) of this financial mess. Bob, deserves every penny or should I say "every printed piece of paper with a £20 sign on it".
Even though I have contributed to this article, I don't really care if they paid Bob Diamond £200 million. And to be honest, I don't think he would care either.
Anyway, the weather is lovely today.. Spring is nearly here.
10. cornishman said...
I've just moved my business account to Abbey from Barclays as they had put up the charges massively. I'm going down to close my personal account later today.
So "up yours" Bob Diamond - you'll get no more from me.
11. whiteknight said...
Don't forget guys this is around the going rate for somebody of Bob's experience...
In a competitive wage market, a headhunter would draw up a list of suitables (would have to be one of the current crowd of people with enough experience to manage an investment bank).
This would be a short list of about 5 similar people who would all want that money.
They have to be able to get along with each other you understand.
12. sold 2 rent 1 said...
cornishman,
My business account is with Abbey - I have no charges at all.
I try to keep the balance around 35K and push the rest out to gold related investments.
13. Letthemfall said...
We are always told that this is the rate for the job; if they don't get paid that they will go to a company that will. But in my view it is more about position and social and business networks, and relationship to the economy. Banks have gigantic cash flows - it's the nature of the business. Therefore they can net large sums of money simply by keeping a modest percentage of this flow (a city type on TV admitted as much in a recent programme). It has little to do with wealth creation. What about the wealth destruction that is currently going on in finance?
Bankers pay has more to do with power and position than creating value. The top people can pay themselves what they like. It is happening in many other parts of the economy. The highly paid are gaining big increases: the lower paid salaried staff are barely keeping up with inflation at best.
Who would like a stab at a top banking job for, say, half of what Diamond gets?
14. wiltshire said...
Sorry but I think the renumeration of these city 'fat cats' and the like is unacceptable. Just how much money does one person REALLY need? Just how many people in the economy are really struggling because so much money is being shovelled by the lorry load into the pockets of a few? Everytime a CEO gets another 5 or 10 million into his pension it means 1000s of his staff are going to be struggling when they reach retirement age.
I accept that people at the top are always going to be well paid but over the past 20 years or so the differential between what the bosses and the staff receive has grown massively. Call me a socialist but I don't think 1000s of people should struggle because of the greed of a few.
15. Pjd123 said...
sour grapes
16. James said...
Yes, Wiltshire. Perhaps we should put the government in charge of executive pay. Of course, we'd need someone with a record of fighting corruption and coming down hard on vested interests in banks. That Eliot Spitzer fellow might be a good choice, for example.
What? Eh? Oh...
17. crash bandicoot said...
The job of a top manager is to put the right people in the right places. He needs little knowlege of what actually happens in the bank - other people see to that. He needs to be able to pick out the good guys in his company. In this respect anyone from an equivalent position in any industry could do the job. If you can see through the bull5hit you are most of the way there.
18. quiet guy said...
I don't know of any reason that Bob Diamond should be singled out for particular praise or criticsim, but the growing imbalance in compensation between ordinary workers and senior executives looks indefensible to me.
Here's a quote from http://www.management-issues.com/2007/8/31/research/ceos-make-in-a-day-what-workers-do-in-a-year.asp
"In 1965, U.S chief executives in major companies earned 24 times more than an average worker. In 1980, the ratio was 40-1. The gap then surged in the 1990s and hit 300 at the end of the recovery in 2000."
and a couple more articles for good measure:
http://www.management-issues.com/display_page.asp?section=opinion&id=3528
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/aug/30/money.executivepay
If it looks like greed, smells like greed and sounds like greed then perhaps it is just greed.
19. wiltshire said...
15. Pjd123 said...
"sour grapes"
Sorry Pjd123 but I don't think it's as simple as that. Do you think that the fact there are millions of people all over the world living on a dollar or two a day is acceptable? That extremely young children all over the world work like slaves and often in dangerous/unhealthy conditions for a pittance? Or is the fact they're not on your doorstep and they're making your cheap trainers excuse enough for you to not care? It's all part and parcel of the same problem.
I accept that high achieving executives will always be well paid but the imbalance is completely out of proportion. Two points -
1) The Guardian has reported that Warren Buffett, the United States’ second-richest man, has AGAIN complained that he pays a lower rate of tax than any of his staff - including his receptionist. He has said:
"The taxation system has tilted towards the rich and away from the middle class in the last 10 years. It’s dramatic; I don’t think it’s appreciated and I think it should be addressed."
2) Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch - During August and September of 2007, as the sub prime crisis swept through the Global financial market, Merrill Lynch announced losses of $8 billion. In October of the same year, he announced his retirement and walked away with a compensation package valued at $161.5 million.