The debate over top pay is not only whether bankers should be capped when footballers are not. Any company offering incentive payments to its salesforce should be wondering if it has got the formula right.
(more…)

Banks should name their highest-paid non-directors, according to Treasury minister Lord Myners. Why? To better inform shareholders? So that customers can switch bank? Or merely to satisfy some prurient public interest?
(more…)

Bang! Sir David Walker’s report closes the banks’ stable door after the money has gone. But how long before his tough boardroom measures become ‘best practice’ for all companies, i.e compulsory?

(more…)

Have we made chairing a company so hard that seats cannot be filled? There are vacancies in the centre of more than half a dozen big boardrooms but the headhunters don’t have that many names on their lists.
(more…)

Another crisis, another corporate governance code. What started as Cadbury and developed into the Combined Code is being rewritten again. But if it changes so often, why should we think this will be the definitive version?
(more…)

After bankers and MPs, FTSE directors are now the target of public humiliation. Boards that thought the City was their ally have discovered it is their assassin.
(more…)

Now National Rail’s chief executive is waiving his annual bonus the group should also abandon its search for two dozen people to keep the board in order. This is corporate governance gone mad.
(more…)

Most people would probably prefer Bernie Madoff to look after their investment than expect HM Government to pick shares. Yet a million employees will soon be asking the state to manage their investments.
(more…)

Two-thirds of businesses claim they will cut or freeze wages. I’ll believe it when I see it, but such threats are the perfect lever for freezing public pay immediately.
(more…)

If share options given when Royal Bank of Scotland’s shares were flying high were generous, options granted now that the shares are lying low are munificent. New chairman Sir Philip Hampton is in line for a bonus that could make Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension look like peanuts.

(more…)