Maybe they do get it after all. Bankers are beginning to realise that their greed and insensitivity to public opinion is damaging them where it hurts: in their reputations and their balance sheets. Barclays says it intends to slash earnings and bonuses in its casino-banking investment division, and the chairman of RBS, Sir Philip Hampton, has discovered – rather late in the day it has to be said - that banker pay is too high and needs to be “corrected”.
Stephen Hester, the chief executive of state-owned RBS last week handed back his £1m bonus (though he keeps his £1.2 million salary and annual £420,000 pension contribution). Bob Diamond, head of Barclays investment division has reportedly put his £10m bonus on hold this year. Damned decent of him. When he accepted his £6.5bn bonus in 2011 he said that “the time for banker remorse is over”, but it seems to have come back again. Bankers have finally realised they are on the road to perdition. But why now?
Look no further than the man formerly known as Sir Fred Goodwin, who had his knighthood rescinded last week. Suddenly all the sirs and lords sitting around the boards of British banks have realised that public alienation can have a cost after all. That they can't just thumb their noses at voter opinion and sneer at politicians indefinitely. It's time to make nice and show a little restraint.
This is the answer to all those who said getting Her Majesty to repossess Fred the Shred's knighthood was a waste of time. It is also a rejoinder to those defeatists who say that nothing can be done to rein in the kleptocrats of British banking because they will just leave the country taking their banks with them. In reality, few of our financial elite want to become voluntary exiles from their country of their birth. Even fewer want to join a club of dishonour that includes the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, and the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.
