BoE's Bailey - too late to revise allowances for 2014 bank bonuses

By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) - It is too late to change the allowances paid to top banking staff that have been deemed to breach European Union law, a senior Bank of England official said on Wednesday. The EU's banking watchdog, the European Banking Authority (EBA), said on Oct. 15 that "role based" allowances being paid by banks were nearly all in breach of the bloc's cap on banker bonuses. Bonuses have been capped at no more than fixed salary, or twice that amount with shareholder approval, and banks had argued the allowances were part of fixed pay. Britain is challenging the bonus cap in the EU's top court with a ruling expected sometime in early 2015. Andrew Bailey, the Bank deputy governor and chief executive of the Bank's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), said it was important for banks to read the EBA's opinion and decide how big the differences are between the structure of their allowances and what the EBA has said. "We will discuss that with them and then the banks need to form a view on what they will do," Bailey told the UK parliament's Treasury Select Committee. Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered have said they are among those paying allowances or planning to. About 10,000 bankers, mainly in London, receive the allowances, according to industry estimates. "It is a non-binding opinion and there has to be a decision on what we do with it," Bailey said of the EBA's comments. "My own view is it is too far into this year as a matter of good practice to change anything this year," he added. The next round of bonuses, covering performance for 2014, will be paid in early 2015. The EBA was asked by the EU's executive European Commission to see whether the allowances were simply a ploy to soften the impact of the bonus cap by bumping up fixed pay. The EBA is due to formally revise its remuneration guidelines for bankers, which are more binding, and which would take effect in early 2016 on bonuses awarded for 2015 performance. Bailey reiterated the UK view that the cap is "bad policy" as it leads to a rise in fixed pay, making it harder for banks to rein in costs to maintain capital levels when markets turn sour. As an EBA board member, he said he did not vote in favour of the opinion on allowances -- the EBA had told journalists there had been unanimous backing but later corrected itself after Bailey contacted the EU watchdog. "It's appalling behaviour on their part isn't it? It's not an accident is it?" Treasury Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie told Bailey. "Were you alone? Were you isolated? Were you a lone voice?" Bailey declined to say if other EU states also opposed the opinion on allowances, but agreed to a lawmaker request to ask the EBA to explain its "miscommunication" to the press. SIMPLER RATIO? The committee has pressed the PRA to impose a leverage ratio on banks that is higher than the 3 percent interim level proposed by the Basel Committee, a body of global regulators. It measures the amount of capital a bank holds in relation to total assets and is seen as a safeguard against potential gaming by banks of how they use a more complex system of risk weights to calculate their core capital buffers. The Bank has been criticised for proposing a complex method of setting a leverage ratio which takes into account the economic cycle. Next week the Bank will publish the ratio it wants lenders in Britain to reach, which is expected to be higher than 3 percent and Bailey hinted it may also streamline its structure. "My view is it's sensible to keep the leverage ratio as simple as you can," he said. "Most of what you learn about the leverage ratio you learn from a relatively simple form of it." (Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Mark Potter)