A senior Treasury minister has said he was "sceptical" whether any application from the predominantly state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland to double its maximum bonus payouts could be justified.
An EU cap coming into force next year only allows bonuses of up to double an employee's salary to be paid as long as shareholders approve. If not, the packages are restricted to the equivalent of 12 months' pay.
Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a £2,000 cap on cash bonuses next year and promised to veto any increase in overall pay at the bank.
But there was no commitment to limit bonuses paid in shares and, because the numbers of investment bankers at the institution have been cut, Labour dismissed as meaningless the effect of his veto.
Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander said in a television interview that no approach had yet been made by RBS.
Mr Alexander said: "I would obviously look at what they have to say, but I would be very sceptical as to whether a case could be made. That's a bank, along with the whole financial system, that has benefited from the taxpayer standing behind it and where the strategy is now RBS has to focus on domestic, retail and business customers."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article