UK Treasury Minister reveals details of private discussions with Sir Fred Goodwin
UK Treasury Minister Paul Myners has today placed himself in a very awkward situation after revealing the details of very private discussions with Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He revealed, in excruciating detail, that at least 100 people at the Royal Bank of Scotland, and possibly as high as 200, actually earned more money in a year than Sir Fred Goodwin himself.
While to the vast majority of the UK population the thought of an employee earning more than those at the top of the tree would seem somewhat alien, this is very much commonplace in the UK financial sector. However, the underlying implication is that the names of these individuals could well be released into the public domain, creating yet another group of "public enemy number one" figures.
The bottom line is that the financial sector is a very specialist area and it does cost a large amount of money to attract the best in the business. When the UK economy, and the worldwide economy, was flying high and everybody was doing well, very little credit was given to the UK banking sector although bizarrely when the world economy declines it appears to be the fault of nobody but the financial sector. This ongoing friction between UK government, regulators and the UK financial sector is set to go on for some time to come.
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