City bankers on course for £7bn in bonuses

• Payouts running at about half the level of last year
• 'Alarming' figures show no awareness of crisis – Cable

Ashley Seager
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 April 2009 00.05 BST
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City bankers are to reap nearly £7bn in bonuses this spring even though the government has been forced to pump tens of billions into the banks to prevent them collapsing.
Analysis of preliminary pay data from the Office for National Statistics shows that in the first three months of the bonus season to February the financial sector has shared out £5bn in bonuses, half the level of the same period last year.
Extrapolating that to the full five months of the bonus season to April means payouts will be between £6.5bn and £7bn, compared with £13.7bn last year.
"These figures are alarming and show a complete lack of awareness in the City of the extent of the financial crisis, their role in creating it and the extent to which they are ultimately answerable to the taxpayer," said the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable. "It would be outrageous if taxpayer-supported institutions are handing out large bonuses, particularly at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs."
In last week's budget, Alistair Darling, revealed that borrowing would surge to £175bn this year as a result of the credit crunch and the country faced nearly a decade of rising taxes and big cuts in public spending to pay for the recession and bank bailouts.
The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: "Given the havoc that the City has wreaked on our economy, pegging back bonuses to a mere £7bn a year falls short of the value for money taxpayers should expect after bailing out the banks."
In 2008, bonuses suffered their first fall in five years as the early months of the credit crunch took their toll – but the fall was small, to £13.7bn from £14.1bn in 2007, after a 30% rise from 2006.
The low point in recent years was £5.2bn in 2003, as the financial sector recovered from the dotcom bust in the stockmarket. This year's payout will be broadly similar to that of 2004, when financial markets were in good shape.
Averaged across the whole of financial services, the bonuses would amount to £6,500 to £7,000 a head, but payouts are not evenly distributed. The City bonus pile works out at close to half the total of £12bn handed out across the whole economy between December and February.
The Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, recently told the Treasury select committee (CBI): "The real debate is how on earth was it that at the time shareholders, boards, the financial press, all thought it was a great idea to reward people in this way. These bonuses were absolutely astronomic." He called bonuses "a form of compensation that rewarded gamblers if they won the gamble but there was no loss if you lost it".
A CBI spokesperson said: "Bonuses given for hard work and success are not a problem. But the link between incentives and long-term performance needs to be strengthened."