RBS to pay monster bonuses to investment bankers

LONDON (ShareCast) - In a move that will likely give the 'banker-bashers' something else to complain about, part-nationalised lender Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) (RBS) is planning on giving out nhundreds of millions of pounds in bonuses to its investment banking division for their work in 2011. According to the City editor of Sky News, Mark Kleinman, RBS has agreed with the government to pay employees of the Global Banking and Markets (GBM) division between £390m and £400m in bonuses. Citing "people close to the bank", he writes that RBS had to reduce that final figure from around £500m after talks with UK Financial Investments, a company whose sole shareholder is HM Treasury and is responsible for managing the government's 82% stake in the lender. Nevertheless, the amount is still some 60% below the level paid to GBM staff the year before. RBS is set to release the information with its full-year results tomorrow. Kleinman writes in his blog that when accounting for the payouts in other areas of the company, the total amount of bonuses paid to the RBS Group as a whole will be in excess of £500m. The news follows last month move by Chief Executive Stephen Hester to waive his controversial bonus share award. Hester was in line to receive a bonus of 3.6 million shares for his performance during 2011 equating to nearly £1m. BC