Fred Goodwin, RBS, and that Pension

I know I’m going against the flow here (now there’s a shock) but I have to say, I really don’t understand the current media (and public) loathing of Sir Fred Goodwin, and his immense pension .

Now first of all, personally I think that getting a pension of near-as-dammit three-quarters of a million quid per year is utterly fucking obscene in the first place. (And particularly when I look at it in the context of “that pension for one year is three times the amount of our sodding mortgage“) But at the same time I realise that payscales are pretty much utterly fucking obscene when it comes to chairmen of multinationals etc. anyway.

In Goodwin’s case, I also kind of understand that people are pissed off that he’s getting paid that much for what he did.

However, from the corporate perspective I can fully understand that he was worth that much to RBS as a chairman.

After all, he managed and steered the bank during its growth phase, to the point where RBS bought up NatWest and Ulster bank (among others) as part of its expansion plans. Under his leadership RBS went from being a little provincial bank to being one of the world’s top five banks. And he was paid in bonuses and salary for that growth.

Then when the bottom fell out of the market, and it was shown what arrogant twats the banks had been, he managed to get the government to buy up a massive share of the bank, thus protecting it from going bust.  I’m sure that having managed both of those things, the board of RBS figured he was absolutely worth what they paid him as a severance and pension package.

The fact that the Government then failed utterly to understand what Goodwin’s severance deal and pension would be is actually more of a sign that the Ministers and MPs involved were totally, utterly, criminally clueless – after all, it looks like he could’ve been fired with “just” a 12-month-salary payment, instead of the severance deal.

As I see it, it’s those Government Ministers and MPs we should be angry with for allowing the Goodwin deal to go through, rather than with Goodwin himself for doing what any corporate multinational chairmen is paid to do – protect and build the company.