Business as usual in bankers' boardroom

John McFall, chair of the Treasury Select Committee, speaking to MSPs, believes our bankers still need "to come into the real world" and that many still do not understand risk (Business, 7 January). He also said the long-term support our banks need gives politicians a "rare opportunity to fashion a new system". The RBS board website is instructive in showing critical areas where the culture and personnel at the heart of its demise remain unchanged.

Archie Hunter, Colin Buchan and Gordon Pell, board members since 2004, 2002 and 2000, respectively, must share responsibility for the disastrous ABN Amro acquisition. Mr Hunter was chairman of its audit committee before, during and since the RBS downfall. A change of culture?

Mr Buchan was appointed for his "experience in very large risk management". For years he has been on the remuneration committee, which set up the very bonus policies now seen to have encouraged the wildly excessive "very large risk" that brought RBS down. As that committee's new chairman, he wants to continue paying vast bonuses, albeit in shares and on a slightly longer timescale, and to increase RBS chief Stephen Hester's potential bonus, only months after an already generous deal was agreed.

Mr Pell will soon retire at 60; so will he follow Sir Fred Goodwin in waiving 30 per cent of his gilt/guilt-edged pension of 517,000 a year to reflect the change of culture? We wait with bated breath. In the same spirit, RBS could confirm if it was fully funded before the taxpayers' bail-out or, more likely, that it is part of the bank's total pension fund shortfall, recently estimated at 12 billion, along with ex-director Larry Fish's pension of 1.6m, reported by RBS as "98 per cent unfunded" and, therefore, paid by us.

We own 84 per cent of RBS and own, control or support large chunks of other banks, so if politicians can't now "fashion a new system", when will they?

JOHN BIRKETT

Horseleys Park

St Andrews