Buchan must go

Has RBS not shot itself in the foot again? A year ago it decided on a bonus scheme threshold share price of 70p; just over a month ago it reduced this to 50p. It may now accept that this may have been set too low, but with chairman Sir Philip Hampton trying to justify that decision because "the share price was sitting at a much lower level than it is today" (30p).

Talk about short-term thinking. In view of this debacle, surely the chairman of the Remuneration Committee (Colin Buchan, the last survivor of the Goodwin era) must be retired forthwith.

Does the board not understand the plain English of "long-term incentive plans"; that, in Stephen Hester's opinion last year, RBS's return to profit is "not really in our hands, it's in the hands of the economy and what it does to our loan books"; and moreover that the general level of the stock market can carry the RBS share price upwards irrespective of what the bankers do?

Bill Jamieson (27 April) reminds us that the RBS rights issue priced the shares at 200p (and they were 6 only three years ago). If any long-term incentive plan should still be based on the share price (which many would dispute) then 200p at the very least must be the threshold.

JOHN BIRKETT

Horseleys Park

St Andrews