Tory MEP Kay Swinburne tells bankers they should find ways around EU bonus cap

The Wasting Mule reports that " A Top Welsh Conservative has been secretly recorded advising bankers to be “innovative” to flout rules that would cap their bumper bonuses".

The party’s MEP Kay Swinburne was caught on tape alongside a Tory MP talking to an audience in the City outlining how the Conservatives had opposed new European rules limiting how much bankers can make on top of their salaries.

Ms Swinburne, who worked in investment banking before becoming an MEP, told the audience there was no public appetite to revoke the cap and suggested they “get around it” instead.


She said: 
  

“I can tell you there is not a single constituent I have met that actually thinks we were right to have taken that to the courts.

Well she right  there but that does not mean that Ms Swinburne that her banking friends should accept  this completely

“They think it was right that there was a bonus cap. So I think it’s up to everybody else to be a little more innovative as to how you get around it and I am hearing all sorts of schemes at the moment that do bypass the overall cap.

EU rules now limit payouts to 100% of a banker’s salary, or 200% if approved by shareholders.
Chancellor George Osbourne launched a legal fight to overturn the cap - spending £43,000 of taxpayers fight on court battles - before abandoning the bid last year after a judge rejected ministers’ claims it was illegal.

Speaking at the same event, Tory MP Mark Garnier described the cap as “vandalistic legislation”.
MP Mr Garnier worked in the City for two decades and founded a hedge fund. He sat on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and is a member of Westminster’s powerful Treasury Select Committee.
He branded the cap “complete nonsense”.
He told the Open Europe Conference in the City on January 20:

 “These types of things the average individual will see in the City just ... sort of rather like ... vandalistic legislation.

“Something like the bonus cap where we’ve done a huge amount of work in this country in order to make sure that you can have deferred bonuses for bankers in order to drive better behaviour and to help the stability of the banks - to suddenly have somebody coming in who doesn’t really apparently know very much about the behaviour of bankers to say ‘we need to have a bonus cap’ is just complete nonsense.
“It drives the wrong kind of outcome.

 Before the  In  2012 HSBC  has set out how chief executive Stuart Gulliver received £7.2m in 2011 – a year when the bank's performance was "satisfactory in aggregate" according to chairman Douglas Flint.

Gulliver has a salary of £1.25m. He can get three times that amount in his annual bonus and six times that in a long-term incentive plan which pays out on a three-year time horizon.

For 2011, he actually received £7.2m – compared with a maximum potential bonus and salary of £12.5m – because the bank awarded him 1.72 times his salary for his annual bonus and three times his salary for his long-term incentive plan. Turning to the annual bonus of £2.1m, financial targets accounted for half of his potential bonus and he achieved 30% out of 50%. Here is the break down, the percentage figure being the maximum that could have been awarded

What does he do with his Bonus which is likely to be a mere £I.5 Million in today's announcement.(Poor Lad)

It seems that Stuart Gulliver,  who has vowed to reform the crisis-hit bank, sheltered millions of pounds in a Swiss account through a Panamanian company and remains tax domiciled in Hong Kong.

So it is clear no matter how  much we  protest about the excess of the City and our Legislators make some attempt to address our concerns. The Fat Cats will find a way around it and there will be Tory MPs and MEPs who will help them in doing so. 

In Kay Swinburne we must ask whether she has actually advised anyone  how to flout the Rules announcing that such things exist and seemingly giving approval is one thing , Actually helping people to flout the rules  is a resigning matter.