Reject chiefs' 'excessive' pay, RBS investors told

Published on Wednesday 18 April 2007 11:47

INVESTORS are being urged to vote against pay awards to executives at the Royal Bank of Scotland when they gather at the Edinburgh-based bank's annual shareholder meeting next Wednesday.

Driving the rejection call is the Pensions Investment Research Consultancy (Pirc), which claims that awards to all RBS executives are "excessive" and that bonus targets are not challenging enough.

The consultancy also wants the group's top American director dumped.

Pirc, whose clients are mainly pension funds and fund managers and hold about 750 billion in assets, is particularly aggrieved about the remuneration of Larry Fish who heads RBS America and was paid 6.6 million in salary, bonus and benefits last year.

Group chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin is also in line for an additional bonus of around 3.5m from RBS' long-term incentive scheme, on top of his salary and standard bonus.

Also voicing concern is the Association of British Insurers. It is concerned at the amount of discretion given to RBS's remuneration committee. It has put an "amber top" on RBS, potentially signalling corporate governance breaches, and said it was seeking more information from the bank before next week's meeting.

According to Pirc: "Mr Fish has a one-year rolling contract and termination bonus (up to 400 per cent of salary) as well as health, life insurance and long-term disability coverage and any benefits at the time of termination."