Rachel Reeves MP, Labour's Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has just been on Newsnight attacking bank bonuses.
She said 'bonuses are for doing "something exceptional". In fact, she repeated it several times. Well, that means she must be right.
Rachel Reeves is well qualified for her job. From 2000 to 2006 she worked as an economist at the Bank of England.
Every year the Bank of England give out bonuses for people who did "something exceptional".
During fiscal year 2006-2007 they gave out bonuses worth £4.8 million to 1606 out of 1744 people. That must have been a whole lot of "something exceptional"!
This was the year before the credit crunch.
I guess she was right. Destroying the economy is "something exceptional" and Rachel Reeves deserved credit (and a bonus) for her part in the story.
Sadly I can't find public information on her bonus payments at her next job.
Between 2006 and July 2009, she worked as a business planner and analyst for Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS). HBOS was taken over by Lloyds Bank in 2009 to save it from bankruptcy. Still, I'm sure she did "something exceptional" at HBOS and got a bonus there too.
So apt it hurts
ReplyDelete"Well qualified for the job"...on paper anyway but she was advising the Bank of England when it was making what turned out to be incredibly bad decisions.
ReplyDeleteShe was working for HBOS at the time it collapsed and they paid bonuses so she almost certainly received one.
She would probably argue that it wasn't her fault and that it is a private matter anyway - but then those arguments can be used by any banker, can't they?
She was probably receiving a bonus every year while she was doing that....
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