Aug 2009 14

RBS: The taxpayer-funded saga continues8

It brings tears to your eyes, doesn't it? Just when taxpayers thought things were looking up for our little involuntary foray into banking, after RBS announced that parts of its business are now in the black earlier this week, they went and did it again.

Over the last two days, there have been two RBS stories that evoke the golden era of banking excess. First up was the swanky refurb of RBS's central London offices, which is estimated to have cost between £38 million and £64 million.  Then yesterday news broke that the new Italian-stallion-superstar-banker they had hired had received a £7 million signing bonus.

RBS, predictably, have defended both. They say the office refurb was signed ages ago, and that Mr. Polverino will be worth every penny.

I, predictably, think that's tosh.

These offices have been done out to the highest possible spec, comes complete with swanky tvs, top-of-the-range chairs, desks, lamps and other office equipment and is meant to be (and this is a direct quote from the no-doubt incredibly chic developer) "contemporary and vibrant". I'll give them contemporary and vibrant. The fact that RBS has actively sworn everyone involved in the project to secrecy shows they knew exactly how this would look, and how much anger it would cause. After Fred the Shred  had to parachute himself out of the country to avoid the baying mob, you would have thought they'd have a bit of a rethink on moving into offices which closely resemble Gordon Gekko's wet dream.

On Mr.Polverino – well, this is nothing personal. He looks like a nice enough bloke, and I am (almost) sure that bringing his skill set to the somewhat fetid RBS table will help get the bank back in the black. But £7 million? I know a lot of bankers and this would be an impressive sum even in the headiness of the banking bubble, but now? Now when we have pumped £20 billion into a bank whose profligate ways meant they were going to go under, taking millions of innocent people's money with them.

The bottom line is that when RBS (or the other nationalised and part-nationalised banks for that matter) is back in private ownership, they can do what they want. They can set up shop on the Starship Enterprise and buy their executives gold-plated toilet roll holders. But when every penny their spending has come out of the pockets of taxpayers who are facing uncertain futures themselves, this all makes me feel a bit sick.

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  • Hardeep Singh

    Susie my dearest, RBS is only behaving in a way befitting it’s new ‘public sector’ status. In other words the taxpayer coughs up and they waste it and then come back for more whilst telling us what a great job they’ve done. Any failings are someone else’s fault and of course! Seems similiar to what’s been going on for sometime now under Labour :)

  • Lewie

    All you say is true.
    We all think the same.
    But what is ever done about these things?
    Nothing.
    It is pointless ranting on if all that it achieves is a few comments.

  • http://www.louisberk.com Louis Berk

    RBS will again hide behind the mantra “we need to pay the competitive rate to get the best people”. The problem is all the best people they had lead them to ruin. They need a few more mediocre people, people who don’t need millions to make simple, straightforward lending decisions. People who will do an honest, hard-days work because that is what they are paid to do.

  • Aylmer Bulstrode

    The taxpayers should take an example from the French. In the unlikely event that this had happened in France, RBS would be moving into a stinking shell. Their fine new offices would have been trashed from top to bottom, smashed to smithereens. There comes a time when perhaps the only solution is to take the law into one’s own hands; people should tolerate only so much from these shameless bastards. Government is powerless. Physical violence is the sanest and most apposite answer. If Fred the Shred had literally had the shit kicked out of him it is unlikely he would have had the impudence to return to the UK.

  • G Dennigan

    Censorship?

  • G Dennigan

    Your article is somewhat selective in fact and detail, rather like the Times article, and reads rather like a ‘Sun’ statement.
    These are brand new offices, not a ‘swanky refurb’ (is there such thing as a drab refurb?) and the process of moving etc. was set in motion long before the financial crisis. To suggest that taxpayers money was snatched to open a posh office is not true. Office rental south of the river is much cheaper than in the City, and cost savings were anticipated as a result.
    Your own pseudo-Tory organisation might care to put its own financial affairs out in a transparent public forum before assuming you can occupy a moral high ground!

  • Daran

    G. Dennigan – I proudly announce you as “Muppet of the Week”.
    “pseudo-Tory organisation” Wow, you’re a laugh. A bit presumptious are we not? Oh, sorry… yes you are correct GD – any organisation wanting good value for the ever dwindling tax-payers hard earned tax take must be a right-wing one.
    In my experience your mentality is likely due because liberals and left-wingers (like yourself?) are normally on social benefits, and therefore don’t have to get off your a*ses to go to work to finance RBS’s extravagance.
    Or is that me being presumptious?

  • G Dennigan

    Gosh Daran, you seem like a really angry man. Do you read the Daily Mail by any chance?
    I would have thought that “any organisation wanting good value for the ever dwindling tax-payers hard earned tax” might be expected to be open and transparent about its funding but The Taxpayers Alliance is not.
    The TPA only publishes abbreviated accounts with income and expenditure are withheld. The last time it published full accounts was in 2006, when it recorded an income of £130,000. But the current organisation has ten full-time staff across two offices, who pays for all this?
    Try answering that instead of ranting senselessly oh presumptuous one!!
    (And if you are going to try using bigger words than the Daily Mail, learn to spell)