Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Sir Fred Goodwin drawing a pension of £650,000 a year aged 50

I am not easily shocked, but really.

The BBC reports:
Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, is already drawing a pension of £650,000 a year, despite only being 50.

The BBC has learned that the pot that generates his pension is worth £16m.
An interesting point is that Goodwin recently told the Commons Treasury select committee that: "My pension is the same as everyone else in the bank who is in a defined benefit pension scheme. It is determined in the same way as anyone else." This appears not to be true.

The BBC report also quotes a statement from RBS:
"The company is taking further legal advice in respect of certain aspects of Sir Fred Goodwin's contractual arrangements and continues to discuss the position with UKFI."

UKFI is UK Financial Investments, the Treasury offshoot that manages public stakes in the banks.

5 comments:

Ian Farmer said...

Where is MY bailout money and MY penison? After 20 years of building a small business we have no mortgage, no debt, pay 10s of thousands of £s in taxes each year. We now have no return on our invetsments and no pension worth talking of. I am now facing working harder not retiring and I am older than Goodwin.

What is the government and especially the conservative party doing to stop Fred Goodwin walking away from RBS with a mega pension. This man has destroyed a business not built one, he has depleted weath not created it and now as a "shareholder" in RBS I would like to know why he is walking away with an obscence pension out of the tax payers coffers?

Anonymous said...

The story of Sir Fred Goodwin and his retirement bounty is exactly why the Banking system in this country cannot carry on as at present. It is utterly immoral for anything like £650k pa to be written into anyone's contract in the first place, add to that the total failure of RBS and the man should be paying money back. Who drew up this contract? And we should be asking how many more such contracts there are in the city. Not one should be allowed to stand while the country and it's people pay the price. Fat cats is no longer a sufficient description 'morbidly obese' is what I would like to see.

Anonymous said...

Vermin like Sir Fred (and his cronies) should be exterminated like the rats they are. Fact is he has seriously damaged the wealth and financial wellbeing of every single person in this country and many more abroad no doubt. I and my children will be paying the price for his incompetence for probably a generation whilst this piece of filth and his family are living the high life. And this under the noses of a Labour government of all things.
Its a bit rich Ministers getting all shirty about his pension when their own is both gold and diamond plated – and just look how incompetent they are. There is only one thing that is certain to come out of any of this and that is that it will be ordinary hard working people who pick up the tab. Perhaps we need a revolution, and then maybe we can deal with these scum the way they need to be dealt with.

Matthew Cain said...

I don't agree with the size of Goodwin's pension. But it's a bit late for the government to be getting sanctimonious on this. And it appears to be bullying Goodwin, which is unedifying: http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/government-bullying-fred-the-shred/

Anonymous said...

I certainly agree that it is late for the government to have woken up to this, but to I would very much like to see Sir bloody Fred bullied. In fact I would like to see the smug turd spit roasted very slowly.