At last Shareholders speak-Barclays Bank

[will_]

crankedup said:

will_ said:

crankedup said:

will_ said:

Isn't the point (really) that if 30% of the shareholders aren't happy, 70% are? And the majority rules? Or should the 30% over-rule the 70%?

The thing about shares is that if you aren't happy with the performance or the pay scales, you sell the shares and - if enough people do that - the share price falls and (eventually) the directors get the chop (not to mention the value of their own portfolios falling). If that isn't happening then (overall) it's clear that the share-holders are happy with the performance and the pay - right?

Personally I think share-holder activism is a good thing, but the minority of share-holders can't (and don't) have any right to hold sway over the majority....

As I have said time and time again, why should shareholders have to ditch stock because the managers are taking excessive remunerations? The fact is that shareholders must be given BINDING VOTING RIGHTS in a way spoken of by Vince Cable. Management must not be permitted to set their own targets and rewards through boards that self serve each other. The idea that senior management can only be judged upon the share price is wholly wrong and certainly unfair to that management. I may find excessive remuneration abhorrent but I still want to see good reward for good results. At the same time you can't judge performance on share price alone unless you are using that as a very long term judgement, in which case poor management would exist in the mix for years. Presume that performance indicators are used by line managers but the senior level of Directors is another issue.

You aren't really dealing with my point.

The majority of shareholders (i.e. owners) ARE happy. So what, exactly, is the problem - except that you (a non-shareholder) aren't happy? And if you are a shareholder, but are not impressed by the performance and/or remuneration packages, why should you be able to over-rule the majority? You can't, therefore your only option is to sell or put up with it - because the majority of the owners ARE happy.

Shareholders already have the power to make a stand against directors' remuneration. The fact is, they don't, either because they don't care, or because they are content with the performance of the company and/or the remuneration.

I think we know what the problem is. As for 70% of shareholders being happy, that simply is not the case is is pure supposition on your part. Millions of shares are held in management funds, I agree a certain percentage may not care a jot, although they are awaking now and this is why we see 30% extremely unhappy. Many shareholders are apathetic simply because they know their vote is non binding, that must change soon to binding votes. As pointed out some shares will be owned by bank employees, guess most of them are happy? No way sell or put up with it, that has gone on for too long and is partly the reason for these excessive remunerations. But its not just the issue of certain sectors being overpaid it is also a problem for the well being of society.

The problem is - people bleating about something that they don't like (high remuneration) whilst not being in a position to do anything about it because (a) they aren't a shareholder or (b) they are in a minority even if they are a shareholder. What is the solution? Don't be a shareholder, (and frankly why would you want to own shares in a badly performing company with overpaid directors) or become a major shareholder. It really is as simple as that. There is no justificiation for altering the rights of shareholders so that the minority (direct) "owners" over-rule the majority of the shareholders, whether they be institutions, employees or individuals. To do so would be completely unfair against the majority.

If only 30% of shareholders object to a remuneration package, that is insufficient to change it. It is completely irrelevant if those shareholders are institutional or not, because the basic investor has a complete choice to invest their funds elsewhere should they not agree with how their fund manager is acting or using their voting rights. No-one is compelled to own shares in companies in which they object to director pay, whether directly or indirectly through pension funds.

[will_]

crankedup said:

No, No soovy, my pension is secured by my own hard work and I retired years ago. Yes of course investments are risky but the top people still seem to gross out on their own rewards whether its been a good year or poor year, that is an insult
My objection (or bile as you call it )is more to do with the ethics and morals together with the effects seen growing within society in general over the ever increasing gap between wealthy and poor. A 400% increase in that gap over the past ten years cannot be justified by any measure IMO.

So you simply object to high pay (to anyone), rather than director's pay? Footballers' pay also contributes to the increasing width of the wealth gap, do you rant about them too?

[Sticks.]

Soovy said:

Look - remember the document you signed when you took out your pension? There was a bit in there about "value of investments can go down as well as up". You signed up to that.

If you didn't want to trust someone with your money, you should have invested it yourself.

Edited by Soovy on Tuesday 1st May 17:09

I think you may have hit the nail on the head here. Those who feel strongly about this issue might say that there should have been added '...down as well as up. While the payments made to those responsible for your investments will just go up and up, exponentially, regardless'.

Disagree with your second point though; not all the financial services industry is untrustworthy - though it's not a bad starting position.

[Soovy]

crankedup said:

.......the ever increasing gap between wealthy and poor.

A 400% increase in that gap over the past ten years cannot be justified by any measure IMO.

Yes it can.

Some people are lazy and poor. And some work hard and do OK for themselves and their families. And so are very lucky and are wealthy.

Life isn't fair, it never has been, and my experience of "the poor" in this Country (many of whom have been clients going through the criminal justice system at one point or another) is that they don't seem to me to be short of money for fags and holidays, or indeed spending all afternoon in the Weatherspoons once their case has been heard and they've paid their fine.

Get real, cranked. You're envious, nothing more.

You should cheer up. You have a pension, and a nice car collection. Be grateful, and (to quote SKA heroes The Specials) "enjoy yourself - it's later than you think".

Edited by Soovy on Tuesday 1st May 17:43

[heppers75]

crankedup said:

Ducking the issues seem to be a favourite tactic of yours. Your hypercritical nature of posts is now fully revealed, you insult me and yet agree with another poster despite the fact that we both alluded to the same issue. re Insurance Company boss calls time on excessive remuneration. Unfortunately I do not seem to have the time to find links and quotes to my posts, although I am retired from work. You must work at the speed of light 24 hours a day to fit it all in, that is not to criticise just a thought.

What hypocrisy? My fair comment was about there was a single example which I researched have you even read the links I researched then posted and actually understood what I said on them? Or did you as I assume not read them and/or my post on them?

Also what issue have I ducked?

Edited by heppers75 on Tuesday 1st May 19:28

[TwigtheWonderkid]

crankedup said:

Millions of shares are held in management funds

Why, if according to you, the CEO is so useless???

[TwigtheWonderkid]

crankedup said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

crankedup said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

heppers75 said:

See that is just the crux of the issue, you simply have a personal and fundamental problem with someone being paid what you consider to be an obscene amount of money.

I will ask a simple question does anyone who is a mere employee of any company and never put a penny of their own money in just 'got a job' ever under any circumstances worth the sort of money we are talking about?

Nail/head.

The problem here is that some are just furious that others can earn millions a year. Doesn't matter what they do. They would complain if someone who simultaneously found a cure for cancer, aids and brought peace to the Middle East was given a multi million bonus.

Because as Martin84 (that's his IQ, not his year of birth I'm guessing) said about 8 pages ago "nobodies (sic) worth £2M a year, we've already established that."

I just wish people would be more honest about it. I'd have a modicum of respect for someone that came on and said "it's just not fair that someone can earn 100 times what I earn, just because I'm a failure and they're a success."

I assume that you do not include myself in your silly assertions?

Case proved. The very thought that I might be including you has got your back up. And that's what this whole thread is about...self delusion. If I attack someone far more successful than I am, I won't have to actually take a long hard look at myself and think about where it went wrong for me.

Blimey! case proved, what case. I find it frustrating that instead of some change minding thoughtful comments you come back with nonsense, sad really.

Looks like I might have hit a raw nerve.

[RYH64E]

When financial companies turn in large profits and strong share prices then bonuses are maybe seen as insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but when profits are harder to generate, and share prices weak, I can see shareholders getting increasingly upset with generous bonus payments. UBS are the latest:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a8547622-93a3-11e1-baf0-...

'A significant number of investors are preparing to confront the management of UBS on Thursday by voting against the Swiss bank’s 2011 pay award and denying executives formal approval of their actions.

The bank’s share price dropped 28 per cent last year and it lost $2.25bn in a rogue trade in London that caused the largest unauthorised trading loss on record in Britain. For the same period, the bank chose to pay 12 members of its executive board SFr70.1m ($77.1m) compared to SFr91m in the year before.'

[heppers75]

RYH64E said:

When financial companies turn in large profits and strong share prices then bonuses are maybe seen as insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but when profits are harder to generate, and share prices weak, I can see shareholders getting increasingly upset with generous bonus payments. UBS are the latest:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a8547622-93a3-11e1-baf0-...

'A significant number of investors are preparing to confront the management of UBS on Thursday by voting against the Swiss bank’s 2011 pay award and denying executives formal approval of their actions.

The bank’s share price dropped 28 per cent last year and it lost $2.25bn in a rogue trade in London that caused the largest unauthorised trading loss on record in Britain. For the same period, the bank chose to pay 12 members of its executive board SFr70.1m ($77.1m) compared to SFr91m in the year before.'

Very good, however UBS had already announced they were slashing bonuses due to profit see here - http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2012-02-08/ubs...

Also the figures you have mentioned in exec differential are a few percentage points out anyway i.e. share price fell 28% exec pay & bonuses fell 23%m hardly a huge disparity IMO! Especially when you consider most of that differential in total figure will be their basic pay so in actuality if you looked at how much just their bonuses had fallen I suspect it would be as near as damit makes no difference 28%!

Also lest we forget here that yes their profits were down but they still had a net profit of 5.3bn! So yet again hardly in the toilet.. http://www.static-ubs.com/global/en/about_ubs/inve...

Edited by heppers75 on Wednesday 2nd May 08:11

[will_]

What I'm confused about is what Cranky et al want to change.

I'm also not entirely clear what he means by "binding" shareholder votes.

At the moment, the majority of share-holders are not objecting to executive pay. So is Cranky proposing that the minortiy over-rule the majority?

Or rather, is he proposing that there be caps on pay for everyone? In which case, can Cranky tell us what he did, so that we can make up a completely off market and arbitrary pay cap for his work?

The problem with the left, and their small minded, short termist envy politics, is if a cap on pay was brought in, do you think the best executives would stay in the UK and keep their businesses here? Because I sure as hell wouldn't.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

will_ said:

What I'm confused about is what Cranky et al want to change.

I'm also not entirely clear what he means by "binding" shareholder votes.

At the moment, the majority of share-holders are not objecting to executive pay. So is Cranky proposing that the minortiy over-rule the majority?

Or rather, is he proposing that there be caps on pay for everyone? In which case, can Cranky tell us what he did, so that we can make up a completely off market and arbitrary pay cap for his work?

The problem with the left, and their small minded, short termist envy politics, is if a cap on pay was brought in, do you think the best executives would stay in the UK and keep their businesses here? Because I sure as hell wouldn't.

Don't cloud the issue with facts. There's no room from pragmatism in this debate. Don't you know Bob Diamond is rich? It shouldn't be allowed!

Just because Bob Diamond has to pay half his £17.7M back to the UK exchequer in tax, far better if we force him to do the same job from a desk in Geneva, so we get nothing, but have the satisfaction of having proved a meaningless and smallminded point.

[RYH64E]

heppers75 said:

Very good, however UBS had already announced they were slashing bonuses due to profit see here - http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2012-02-08/ubs...

Also the figures you have mentioned in exec differential are a few percentage points out anyway i.e. share price fell 28% exec pay & bonuses fell 23%m hardly a huge disparity IMO! Especially when you consider most of that differential in total figure will be their basic pay so in actuality if you looked at how much just their bonuses had fallen I suspect it would be as near as damit makes no difference 28%!

Also lest we forget here that yes their profits were down but they still had a net profit of 5.3bn! So yet again hardly in the toilet.. http://www.static-ubs.com/global/en/about_ubs/inve...

Edited by heppers75 on Wednesday 2nd May 08:11

A 28% fall in share price would far outweigh a nett profit of CHF5.3bn, so once again the shareholders are getting stuffed while the execs reward themselves with substantial bonuses.

Why would performance leading to a share price fall of 28%, and a 44.8% drop in profits, deserve a bonus of any kind?

[TwigtheWonderkid]

RYH64E said:

Why would performance leading to a share price fall of 28%, and a 44.8% drop in profits, deserve a bonus of any kind?

It might do if across the sector the average share price fall was 56% and an 89.6% drop in profits. Then your figures would represent a fantastic performance in a troubled sector.

A bit like Barclays, who continued to produce profits when many of their competitors actully went bust and mugs like me had to bail them out.

[heppers75]

RYH64E said:

A 28% fall in share price would far outweigh a nett profit of CHF5.3bn, so once again the shareholders are getting stuffed while the execs reward themselves with substantial bonuses.

Why would performance leading to a share price fall of 28%, and a 44.8% drop in profits, deserve a bonus of any kind?

Can you not do simple math or are you avoiding the premise because it makes sense?

Also I can understand if a business does not make any profit that they get no bonus but hello CHF5.3bn!!!

ETA - You lot have been banging on about if profits and share values fall that pain should be shared, you have just provided a direct example of the fact that is happening and now you are arguing it should be even more draconian in that they even if the business makes billions in profit the execs should still get f**k all! Where does your logic (such as it is!) actually end?

Edited by heppers75 on Wednesday 2nd May 09:28

[RYH64E]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

It might do if across the sector the average share price fall was 56% and an 89.6% drop in profits. Then your figures would represent a fantastic performance in a troubled sector.

A bit like Barclays, who continued to produce profits when many of their competitors actully went bust and mugs like me had to bail them out.

What do you think would have happened to Barclays if their bid for ABN Amro had been successful? They wanted to acquire ABN, and were prepared to pay over USD90bn for the privilege, it wasn't management brilliance that allowed them to dodge that particular bullet.

[RYH64E]

heppers75 said:

Can you not do simple math or are you avoiding the premise because it makes sense?

Also I can understand if a business does not make any profit that they get no bonus but hello CHF5.3bn!!!

ETA - You lot have been banging on about if profits and share values fall that pain should be shared, you have just provided a direct example of the fact that is happening and now you are arguing it should be even more draconian in that they even if the business makes billions in profit the execs should still get f**k all! Where does your logic (such as it is!) actually end?

Edited by heppers75 on Wednesday 2nd May 09:28

The execs get paid to produce a profit, I'm not proposing reducing their salary.

A bonus should be a reward for exceptional performance, which I would measure in terms of value to the shareholders. Shareholders losing a big chunk of their investment (which usually far outweighs any benefit from dividends) doesn't warrant a bonus imo.

You focus on the absolute size of the profit rather than any other measure such as RoE. Big companies should produce big profits, they have a lot of capital and a lot of people. It isn't the size of the profit that is important rather the size of the profit in relation to the size of the company.

Anyway, I haven't got time for this today. I'm at work, I've got a desk load of stuff to sort out and I'm going out for lunch. I'll pick it up again this evening.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

RYH64E said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

It might do if across the sector the average share price fall was 56% and an 89.6% drop in profits. Then your figures would represent a fantastic performance in a troubled sector.

A bit like Barclays, who continued to produce profits when many of their competitors actully went bust and mugs like me had to bail them out.

What do you think would have happened to Barclays if their bid for ABN Amro had been successful? They wanted to acquire ABN, and were prepared to pay over USD90bn for the privilege, it wasn't management brilliance that allowed them to dodge that particular bullet.

With the greatest of respect, some of your previous points have been well made if misguided, but now you're talking complete and utter drivvel.

Had barclays been sucessful in their bid, they would have then go on to do due dilligence before finalising the deal, at which point one would hope they'd have run for the hills.

To say that because Barclays put in a bid then the only reason they avoided buying it was because they were outbid is complete garbage.

RBS proceeded with that deal because Goodwins ego would not allow him to pull out. I doubt Diamond would have made that error. When the price for ABN reached a point that he considered too high, he walked away. Goodwin couldn't walk away, he had to win.

Another reason why Diamond is perhaps deserving of his £17.7M.

[TTwiggy]

I note that 'not exactly a raving communist' Ferdinand Mount (Eton and Oxford educated, former head of policy for Margaret Thatcher) seems to agree that the gulf between rich and poor has become unsustainably wide, and that shareholders are getting a bad deal in his new book 'The New Few'.

[league67]

heppers75 said:

Can you not do simple math or are you avoiding the premise because it makes sense?

Also I can understand if a business does not make any profit that they get no bonus but hello CHF5.3bn!!!

ETA - You lot have been banging on about if profits and share values fall that pain should be shared, you have just provided a direct example of the fact that is happening and now you are arguing it should be even more draconian in that they even if the business makes billions in profit the execs should still get f**k all! Where does your logic (such as it is!) actually end?

Edited by heppers75 on Wednesday 2nd May 09:28

Heppers75,

You do come across as petulant and not very clever. Adding three ! for dramatic effect is laughable. Same applies to using 'comrade'. Not big and certainly not clever. And if someone can't do simple maths it is you. At the start of this thread you pulled figures out of your ass, when shown how stupid they were, you went with 'mea culpa'. RY went patiently, to explain simple maths to you, provided the links to support his position.

You miserably failed to comprehend very simple statements, but I'm sure you felt pleased with yourself for repeating worn-out quasi-insults.

I wish there was an Ignore facility on this forum, so you can just mark certain posters.

[heppers75]

league67 said:

heppers75 said:

Can you not do simple math or are you avoiding the premise because it makes sense?

Also I can understand if a business does not make any profit that they get no bonus but hello CHF5.3bn!!!

ETA - You lot have been banging on about if profits and share values fall that pain should be shared, you have just provided a direct example of the fact that is happening and now you are arguing it should be even more draconian in that they even if the business makes billions in profit the execs should still get f**k all! Where does your logic (such as it is!) actually end?

Edited by heppers75 on Wednesday 2nd May 09:28

Heppers75,

You do come across as petulant and not very clever. Adding three ! for dramatic effect is laughable. Same applies to using 'comrade'. Not big and certainly not clever. And if someone can't do simple maths it is you. At the start of this thread you pulled figures out of your ass, when shown how stupid they were, you went with 'mea culpa'. RY went patiently, to explain simple maths to you, provided the links to support his position.

You miserably failed to comprehend very simple statements, but I'm sure you felt pleased with yourself for repeating worn-out quasi-insults.

I wish there was an Ignore facility on this forum, so you can just mark certain posters.

Very nice of you to pop up and lead off the bat with personal attacks how very un-petulant of you.

To clarify for you, I initially was using example numbers to illustrate a point of math and percentage and not using real world numbers - I thought I had got that across and I clearly had not and unlike many people here including it would seem you I was perfectly happy to admit that was not appropriate so therefore went on to using real world numbers, hence mea culpa.

Which simple statement did I fail to comprehend?

I feel very much the same as for anyone to lead into a discussion with a series of personal attacks on a poster and not actually contribute is exactly the kind of person that needs very much to be ignored!

ETA having a gander through a few of your more recent posts however I can now see this is very much your MO as I found very few without personal attacks and insults in across a number of discussions you had by and large contributed very little to. So very clearly this is the kind of thing that 'gets you going' - good luck with that.

Edited by heppers75 on Wednesday 2nd May 14:24