Irish investment banker set for multimillion pound bonus

IRELAND’S BEST-paid banker, RBS investment banking chief executive John Hourican, is expected to receive most of a multimillion pound bonus in coming months, despite negative publicity about banker bonuses.

Yesterday, the bank’s chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, said bankers’ pay had been “high for too long” and needs to be “corrected”, but he also insisted that RBS, which was rescued by the British taxpayer to the tune of £45 billion in 2008, had to attract and keep top talent.

Last week, the bank’s chief executive, Stephen Hester decided not to accept a £1 million share bonus following a public and political furore, though many in the City of London believe he has been made a scapegoat.

Mr Hourican, who was appointed in 2009  to run RBS’s troubled investment banking arm after the collapse, is eligible to receive up to 21 million free shares in April under a performance-related bonus scheme, along with an option to buy up to sevenmillion more at 28p each.

A decision on how many of the shares he will get for free, and on how many he will be able to buy at a fixed price, will be made by the bank’s remuneration committee before the three-year incentive becomes due in early April.

Currently, the share option scheme is worth little to Mr Hourican, since the bank’s shares traded yesterday at just above 28p, though the potential value of that element of the package would depend on how much time he was allowed to buy the shares.

Besides his salary, Mr Hourican, who is highly regarded by fellow bankers and is credited with leading the slimming-down of RBS’s dangerously exposed balance sheet, received 15.7 million shares in 2009 and about five million in 2010.

Defending RBS management yesterday, Sir Philip said: “We’re a commercial organisation competing in extremely competitive markets, I think it’s highly unlikely that we’ll have the best possible people to do that if we don’t pay appropriate amounts,” he said.

“Now the amounts are high by absolute standards but by relative standards what Stephen Hester is getting is not high at all, in fact it’s quite low,” he said, though he added that RBS had “underestimated” the public reaction to Mr Hester’s share bonus.

Privately, banking sources believe that the bank will not want to concede much more ground over executive pay, though the Labour Party has decided to force a debate in the House of Commons next week on the issue.

The bank’s chairman received considerable good publicity after it was announced he was not accepting £1.4 million worth of shares, though on closer examination it meant that he was not accepting an option to buy 5.1 million shares at 29p – a price higher than the market price.

Accepting that major changes must take place in banking, Sir Philip said: “Essentially, particularly in the banks, particularly in the investment banks, shareholders have done pretty badly and employees have done pretty well. That needs to be corrected,” he said.

In a speech yesterday, Labour leader, Ed Miliband maintained pressure on the bankers saying that they had to end “the culture of excessive bonuses”.