..better make sure the piper knows what tunes to play.
I am not a huge fan of people who lead their company badly and get hugely rewarded.
Nor of footballers who get paid many thousands of pounds a week without showing the same commitment as their supporters who earn a tiny fraction of that wealth.
Nor of people who seek their fortune by suing the NHS, or other ambulance chasers who seek to bring American style litigation to the UK.
Nor of reality TV shows which exploit the vulnerable in the hope of reward.
But neither am I a fan of retrospective legislation to deal with our collective outrage about one man's pension scheme. When a Board of Directors appoints a person to do a job for a particular financial package they take a risk. It is there duty to assess and manage the risks of the whole company and sometimes they go spectacularly wrong.
In the case of RBS is it Sir Fred that should lose his pension? Or maybe it should be the Remuneration Committee who should lose theirs. Or the Board of Directors. or the Regulator. or the Minister. Or maybe the bank managers and clerks who didn't do their jobs well enough to encourage profitable business. Or the cleaners for not making the banks attractive enough for people to want to step over the threshold.
It is clear that people just want a scapegoat to run out of town, and whilst that is entirely understandable, it also seems to me that it is the first step on a rocky road. I have a contract with my company. I have a single company pension which relies on that contract. I don't want someone to be able to come along in five years time and tear it up because the results we hoped for haven't been forthcoming.
There are easy and sustainable contracts which can be put in place which relate to performance. The fact that didn't happen in the case of RBS is not the fault of the individual concerned. If he decided to donate a portion of his pension to charity, that's up to him. It's not up to anyone else to steal it.
