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Actually, it is a British company (Midland Bank was the lead bank in the merger), with its major commercial centre in London, but for commercial reasons they kept the name of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
But that's by the by. Midland Bank was British, and to all intents and purposes its the same bank, so yes, they have a duty to show loyalty to their workers in this country. They have a duty to treat their customers fairly, and not as a cash cow to be exploited, abused, and then driven to suicide when the money runs dry.
I find it sad that people always leap to the defence of the multinationals. They make lots of money so all they do is good. What tosh.
I am not leaping to the defence of the corp. or the morals behind it, but the #1 of any company, let alone massive global companies SUFFER for their money. Stress, working all hours, deterioated family life, and they DO have an awesome amount of business skill otherwise they wouldn't be successful.
They deserve to be remunerated for that.
As you keep saying, HSBC £10bn profit, that's no small feat, and that's why the bonuses are so high, the profits are some of the biggest going, so the bonuses are obviously going to follow?
It's not like they are a manager of a Spar outlet or something, is it?
Well I'd agree with that, let everyone have a share of the profits. It's not just about Britain, after all.
I'm sure they suffer horrifically, with the private yachts and the private jets, the exclusive golf courses and the penthouse apartments and the huge mansion in Gloucestershire. God it must be such a hard life. I don't know how they cope. And the children must suffer so terribly at Eaton and Harrow, it makes me cry to think of their pain.
But seriously, yes, some of them probably do work long hours, and some of them probably feel stressed. So do nurses, and nurses have life, death and poo in their hands. So why don't nurses get paid £10m a year? Why don't their cashiers get paid more, after all, they're the ones who get the abuse, and have to tell the starving mother that no, actually, the charges won't be refunded, and she'll just have to go hungry.
Are CEOs 200 times more important than midwives? 50 times more important than doctors? 400 times more important than the bloke working nights in the Esso garage down the road? Are they balls.
As for "business skill", basically that means they're better at stamping on people's faces than I am. Yeah, I'd agree with that, I couldn't sack 20,000 workers and then fuck off to play some golf. If I behaved like a CEO I'd hang myself in shame from a noose made out of crisp fifties.
People will never agree on something that provokes such reactions, especially when it's about large (obscene) amounts of cash.
For me, it's a case of certain choices and abilities take you certain directions. Sometimes you end up very well paid, sometimes you don't. WHen people embark on their choices to be a nurse etc, they KNOW they're not going to make millions, yet that is not the thing driving them. Their choice, different to others, and so it's a little unfair to compare them with the CEO/Directors of a multinational corporation.
At the end of the day, I'm doing ok, and I'm happy. Selfish? Possibly. Bothered? No.
I'm done with this one.
I don't object to CEOs being rewarded for success. Stuart Rose has done an excellent job turning M&S around, he's got big bonuses and I don't see any problem with that. (And to be fair M&S shopfloor staff have done pretty well too, since Rose took over they've got a better bonus). What is disgusting is CEOs being rewarded for failure; take some of Rose's predecessors who achieved nothing at M&S yet walked away with massive bonuses/pay-offs. There are countless examples of execs who've done more harm than good at struggling companies walking away with millions, Cable & Wireless and Rover come to mind. The scum behind the Phoenix Consortium that bought MG Rover for a token few thousand walked away with over £40 million.
Couldn't agree more!!
And without doing anything in particular to increase or even mantain the profits of the company- certainly nothing different to the workers down the shop floor- a number of execs at the top take obscenely large bonuses year after year while remaining 95% of employees get nothing or a pitiful token amount.
I really struggle to understand how anyone here could justify that.
A used car dealer gets 10% of profits on cars he sells. He sells £200k of cars in a year so makes £20k.
A stockbroker, foreign exchange or gold trader also gets 10% of profit he makes for the bank. He makes £50m in a year so gets a £5m bonus.
Britain is not isolated from the rest of the planet, London is one of several competitors for international business. If we paid that stockbroker £100k instead of £5m he would 90% bugger off to USA, Hong Kong, Singapore or Sydney where he'd make his £5m equivalent.
We have no choice but to pay silly amounts of money for the top talent and/or senior people because otherwise they would bugger off, or lose motivation to perform - a trader will stay motivated if he gets 10% of profit he makes, but not bother / change industry if that was 1%.
I don't think anyone will doubt how sick and wrong it is that millions in this country can't make ends meet whilst others have too much money so buy more houses and yachts for the sake of it. But there's absolutely no solution to this; as it is 40% of people's bonuses, plus VAT on everything they buy, goes straight to the taxman, and this is singlehandedly propping up the UK, without City bonuses hospitals and schools would struggle to function. As it is this 40% rate is too high for most rich people who are domesticated abroad etc.
So what on earth do you suggest instead Aladdin/Kermit???
Ricardo (City banker)
Interestingly you've just summed up the views of the British car industry. Its all very fine, but unless you innovate, market and keep your eye on market trends you may find yourselves left behind.
In reality if you want to stay in business you need to constantly be proactive.
Not everybody in receipt of City bonuses is a city broker personally making the company millions through hard work- as you will surely know. Some people get insane bonuses for little more than sitting in the boardroom and patting each other's backs all year.
Yes some fat cats are overpaid, get rid of them and what instead, have the shelfstackers move into managerial stuff? You'll have no idea how incompetent so many people are with basic decision-making, spelling or adding up. Bottom line is, like capitalism, the system is fucked up but there's no better alternative.
A few people might go. Most others have to stay. Certainly 'ordinary' City boys who are not CEOs and are simply not so hot that America is sending its best people to headhunt them. Plenty of efficient brokers in America and elsewhere.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the fault lies with 'ordinary' City brokers. But it is wrong to suggest companies are 'forced' to pay such absurd bonuses to prevent people leaving the country. It's nothing more than a nice little self congratulary club for the top 5% of the company at the detriment of everyone else.
Totally Agree.
At last, someone in this thread not on their high horse. A very welcome comment
Erm... what would you spend that kind of bonus on?
I'd spend it!
Mate, i could rinse it quickly haha.
I'd have the best time eeeever.
A lot of those people getting those bonuses have NO life outside of work.
Try going down to Canary Wharf at 10pm and you'll see people that have JUST left the office ...
People can choose to do well at school, they can choose to get qualifications, they can choose to spend 10 years as an apprentice at a top firm and then they can choose wether or not they stay with that firm and get rewarded for it at the end.
Why should someone who has put in all the time, money and effort to get to the top be penalised because it just doesn't feel right for them to be earning so much money?
I'd be quite pissed off if i'd spent most of my youth in education only to be paid the same as some slacker who couldn't be arsed and decided a good career move would be stacking shelves for the same company.
Then blame the parents for not putting the right empthasis on education, and blame peers for bullying instead of supporting clever people, but at the end of the day you've still got yourself to blame. I knew from a very early age that if I ever wanted a good job i'd need to work hard for it, i worked as hard as I could as did my friends and we've all come out with decent jobs. We don't get paid more than most people, but we can afford to live comfortably.
I'm not having a dig at "blue collar" workers, most of whom if they've been working long enough will probably be getting paid more than me anyway, however shelf stacking isn't blue collar work, it's menial work and the pay reflects that.
To compare a city worker and the wages they get paid, who will have been working for the same firm most of the working life, earnt that firm millions of pounds in profit to a casual worker who whatever reason couldn't or wouldn't get on in life is not fair at all. To do so is punishing people for working hard. I think by seeing these people, youngsters will realise that to actually get any money you need to do well early on, and that becoming a pop-star is a fantasy.
but when you chose to become a midwife you known that the money was shit, so you have no right to start moaning now about other people making more money then you,
Nice. Well perhaps I'll tell all the other midwives that, and we'll all leave to go and work in the city and earn hundreds of thousands a year. Not sure who will deliver all the babies when we do, mind.
But he has a point. You entered into your training to be a midwife knowing what the kind of wages would be.
I 100% understand that you face pressures of a kind most people working in the City can only imagine, as they will face pressures YOU won't understand, but they chose their path, and you chose yours. There is no point, as I said before, comparing the two types of jobs, nor the monies involved.