AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 7:38 AM on 30th January 2012

Pay at bailed-out banks is inching back up to pre-crisis levels, according to research that reveals senior executives at state-owned lenders have been paid more than ?100m since 2006.

The analysis will intensify pressure to curb City pay, just as the Government faces outrage that Stephen Hester could earn up to ?35.5m for leading the recovery of 82 per cent state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland.

Figures from shareholder advisory body PIRC show that pay packages have been on the increase since 2009, when the banking crisis reached  its peak.

Even without lucrative share incentive schemes, executive directors at Lloyds Banking Group, RBS and Northern Rock paid themselves ?103m between 2006 and 2011.

And while pay has not returned to the exorbitant heights enjoyed in the City before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, remuneration is growing ever more generous.

Lloyds paid its executive directors salary and bonuses worth ?4.1m in 2008, rising to ?7.9m the following year, and ?8.8m in 2010.

RBS paid ?3.6m in 2009, but has raised that figure to about ?5.8m in 2010.

Shareholders have become increasingly interventionist on pay and are understood to have told Barclays they will react with fury if reports of a ?10m bonus for boss Bob Diamond turn out to be accurate.

Deborah Hargreaves of pay watchdog the High Pay Centre said Hester’s deal was just ‘the tip of the iceberg’.

She added: ‘With average executive pay for a chief executive in the FTSE 100 now at ?4.2m we need to recognise that this is a bigger problem which will have bigger effects.’

A survey of 2000 participants for the centre found that 71 per cent believe that high pay ‘undermines trust in business and is damaging to the economy’.

In an earlier poll, it found that just 7 per cent of people think the boss of a FTSE100 company should be paid more than ?1m per year, including bonuses and pension contributions.

Only 1 per cent felt they were worth the average ?4m paid to blue-chip bosses.

The centre launches today with the aim of monitoring top pay, amid moves by Vince Cable to legislate to give shareholders greater powers.

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