On bankers bonuses; from one RBS shareholder to another

Date: 10 February 2011

Liz Murray, WDM campaigner and UK taxpayer

Stephen Hester, boss of bailed-out bank RBS, is set to get just over £2million worth of shares as a bonus for his last year’s work.  Well, as one RBS shareholder (mine are part of the Government’s 83% stake, since they bailed you out and I’m a UK taxpayer) to another, Mr Hester, I think we’d better watch out because who knows what might happen to our shares if you don’t have a long, hard look at your bank’s future investment strategy.   I’m talking about coal, oil, gas and now high-carbon, super-polluting tar sands that RBS continues to finance. 

With RBS having such a fossil-fuel rich portfolio of loans and investments, we shareholders are pretty exposed.  Because as climate change policies tighten, and the fiscal and regulatory measures needed to meet those policies are brought into play, then your bank’s fossil fuel investments could well go bad – and that would be bad news for your £2 million of shares, Mr Hester (not to mention mine).   So, let’s protect our investment. 

I think the answer is for me to ask the Chancellor to meet with you to see whether, between you, you can’t come up with a solution that reduces your investments in fossil fuels, slows the race to climate catastrophe that your bank is so keenly participating in, protects our investments for the future and puts some serious money into the speedy transition to a low carbon economy that is so desperately needed.  A strong set of environmental and ethical criteria to invest by, and aligning your investment policies to those of the future Green Investment Bank would be my suggestion. Then perhaps you’ll get a decent return on those £2 million worth of shares, and I won’t feel quite so hacked off at having had to foot the bill for your banks incompetence in 2008!