(Guardian) A defiant HSBC is handing its chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, allowances worth £32,000 a week – on top of his £1.2m salary – to get around the EU's cap on bonuses, in a move that is expected to be replicated by the other high street banks.
HSBC became the first UK bank to reveal how it will sidestep the pay restrictions imposed by Brussels, as it further fuelled the debate over City pay by also revealing that 239 of its bankers received more than £1m last year. Gulliver, the boss of Britain's biggest bank, hit out against the new rules, which restrict bonuses to 200% of salary even with shareholder approval, but the TUC accused HSBC of "soaraway boardroom greed".
The £1.7m "fixed pay allowance", paid in shares every three months on top of Gulliver's salary, will ensure he is paid a minimum of £4.2m a year, up from £2.5m now. Similar allowances, in shares that cannot be sold for five years, are being handed to 111 top bankers at HSBC, while another 554 are to be handed extra payments in cash.
The move prompted Labour to call for a repeat of its bonus tax while the Robin Hood Tax campaign said the payments bolstered its argument for a tax on financial transactions.
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