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Ben Chu
Ben Chu has been a leader writer at The Independent since 2004. Before that he worked at the paper on the comment desk, letters department and the personal finance pages. He studied history at Jesus College, Oxford between 1997 and 2000.
It has been remarked upon that one of the peculiar features of modern high finance is that firms seem to be run not in the interests of their customers, nor even their shareholders, but their employees. That reality is beautifully demonstrated by this story. The managers of the publicly-listed hedge fund, Och-Ziff have decided to increase the bonuses paid to their traders, despite the fact that the fund has just registered an $88.3m loss. Indeed, the money set aside for these bonuses is responsible for an astonishing $25.4m of Och-Ziff's losses.
Now, one might argue that if Och-Ziff's investors and shareholders are stupid enough to allow the employees of the fund to plunder it in this way then that's their lookout. Fine. But my problem is with banks that were rescued by taxpayers, and in which taxpayers still have a significant stake, employing the same lunatic remuneration policies.The managers of these banks bleat about the need to pay the market rate for top talent. But the "talent" which seems to be most admired these days in Wall Street and the City of London appears to be the ability to take the money of customers, investors and taxpayers and transform it into bonuses, regardless of performance.
Now, one might argue that if Och-Ziff's investors and shareholders are stupid enough to allow the employees of the fund to plunder it in this way then that's their lookout. Fine. But my problem is with banks that were rescued by taxpayers, and in which taxpayers still have a significant stake, employing the same lunatic remuneration policies.The managers of these banks bleat about the need to pay the market rate for top talent. But the "talent" which seems to be most admired these days in Wall Street and the City of London appears to be the ability to take the money of customers, investors and taxpayers and transform it into bonuses, regardless of performance.
