Credit Suisse announces surprise bonus payments

Financial giant Credit Suisse has today surprised the City with the announcement that 400 managing directors are set to receive one-off "discretionary leadership awards" which will take the form of cash payments. However, these payments, subject to performance targets, will not be released to the individuals in question until 2012 and 2013, after the UK government's 50% bonus tax rate has expired.

Only last year Credit Suisse received much praise from the UK authorities after announcing bonus payments and confirming that the company would cover additional tax liabilities from recent taxation changes. However, there are murmurings about the sophisticated tax structure to these particular discretionary payments although the company has done nothing wrong in relation to any existing UK tax legislation.

In many ways it seems that the UK financial arena has yet again become the "devil incarnate" with the anger of all politicians, consumers and many businesses pointed towards this particular area of the UK economy. Many people fail to recognise that the financial sector has been the heartbeat of the UK economy for some time now and indeed over the years has paid billions upon billions of pounds in corporation tax as well as individual tax.