Thursday 3 December 2009

Culture Change in Banking - an Opportunity

So the RBS board members are threatening to resign if Alistair Darling does not let them pay big bonuses. Doesn't this just say it all about the banking culture that brought world banking and the economy to its knees? Let them resign! At the core of what went wrong was the toxic effect of a banking culture that promised huge bonuses and therefore attracted precisely the wrong sort of people, i.e. those motivated purely by egregious greed. To change the culture we need to attract able but pricipled people into banking - people who will be happy with more reasonable remuneration and will get their kicks from the satisfaction of a job well done rather than their next new car. Without this change there will be no real culture change in the world of banking, with the continuing risk of further calamity. AD should start the ball rolling  - by rolling some heads!