Mark Freebairn: ‘It’s like a fire on an oil platform – the man to fight it is brought in, then asked to do it for less money’

THE view of the City – and I’m not really talking personal shareholders, but investment professionals and management – is that you would want the right person to be doing this job.

The individual needs to be immensely capable at what they do, and that kind of capability makes them very attractive to other organisations.

Remuneration will obviously play a part in that, as otherwise someone may consider going elsewhere. His is a name which is very high up in any discussions if a bank or any company with a large asset base is looking for a chief executive.

I know Stephen [Hester] has been approached about at least one job, if not a number, and the fact he has stayed shows he is obviously very committed to turning RBS around.

Given that we own 83 per cent of the bank, it’s an advantage for us as shareholders to keep the current management team. Just because it is a large sum of money in comparison with what most people in this country earn, the argument that he should hand it back on people screaming that he shouldn’t take it seems a bit harsh.

If I were him, what I would have done is taken the money and given it to charity. If he had done that, everyone would have been shouting about what a great man he is. He deserves enormous praise for what he has done, but he is not going to get it.

Not many people would want to do his job. Stephen is doing it despite the amount of scrutiny he is under, despite all the press attention and the pressure. He could be doing a much easier job on much higher pay.

I wonder, is he doing this job out of a sense of public duty? He is in a genuinely impossible situation. It is a bit like an oil platform which is on fire. Someone is brought in to put it out, then halfway through them putting it out, they’re asked: “What are you earning for this? £100,000? Well, why don’t you do it for £10,000 instead?”

We have to make a choice in this country. We either pay a market-rate salary for a role and give ourselves the best chance of employing superb people, or we rely on extraordinary people deciding to do a job for far less than they could earn elsewhere, or we accept paying below market rate gets us the equivalent employees. Big shareholders are comfortable with the first option.

• Mark Freebairn is partner and head of the financial management practice at City headhunters Odgers Berndtson.