RBS CEO Hester Says Taking Bonus Would Be ’Damaging for RBS’
February 08, 2012, 5:09 AM ESTBy Andrew Atkinson and Robert Hutton
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester said he decided to forego his bonus because “it would be damaging for RBS to stay in the intensity of the spotlight that we’d got into.”
The bank, rescued by the taxpayer in 2008, is “held in some respects to a higher standard,” he said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program. “We have to behave in a way that leads on some of these difficult issues.” Still, he said, “we can’t be completely different.”
Hester said RBS is engaged in defusing “the biggest timebomb in history” which, if done well, will be “an incredibly valuable thing for the country.”
“We would make a mistake as a society if if we forget how wealth is generated, how successful people are motivated,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Atkinson in London at a.atkinson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Atkinson at a.atkinson@bloomberg.net
