The British government is prepared to tighten the laws on bankers’ pay and bonuses if companies continue to reward excessive risk-taking, British finance minister Alistair Darling told the Sunday Times newspaper.
Darling said in an interview on the paper’s Web site that he understood public concern over high salaries at banks, many of which sought government support during the credit crisis.
“If we need to change the law and toughen things up, we can do that,” he was quoted as saying.
“The public is rightly concerned because the taxpayer has had to stand behind a number of these banks, and the whole banking system, in effect. So people want to make sure we don’t get ourselves into this situation again,” he said.
He gave no details about the possible new laws or the appropriate level or type of pay schemes offered to the highest performers in the financial sector.
Britain was forced to nationalize lenders Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley and take large stakes in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds after they were hit by the global economic and financial crisis.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, trailing in the polls with an election less than a year away, has overseen unprecedented measures to help the financial system, putting an estimated £1.3 trillion (US$2.15 trillion) of taxpayers’ money at risk.
Britain’s Financial Services Authority issued new guidelines about bank pay earlier this week, banning guaranteed bonuses of more than one year and suggesting pay be structured to deter short-term risk taking.
But some politicians and voters are worried the measures don’t go far enough and banks are returning to “business as usual,” with huge rewards for top-performing staff.
Similar concerns have been expressed across Europe, Asia and North America.
Darling, keen to address public anger over high pay during the worst recession for generations, said banks must not be allowed to repeat past risky behavior.
“I am quite clear that some of the problems we have today were caused by the fact that some traders were incentivized to take risks which neither they nor their bosses fully understood,” he told the Sunday Times.
The British Bankers Association says Britain’s rules on bankers’ pay are already among the most stringent in the world.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS