Disclosure of the staggering figure amounts to political dynamite as the Prime Minister fought off suggestions that he should veto the near-£1m bonus, announced last week, for the boss of the taxpayer-owned RBS.
The extra bonus of £3.3m, revealed yesterday, would be on top of the £35.54m total remuneration package Mr Hester has received since joining RBS in 2008.
As the political storm surrounding executive pay at RBS grew, Ed Miliband called on David Cameron to intervene and urged RBS shareholders to block the £963,000 bonus at its AGM in April.
The Labour leader will call for Mr Cameron or George Osborne, the Chancellor, to make an urgent statement to the Commons tomorrow on the affair at a time when the Government is capping benefits for the poorest in society. It will cast doubt on the vow by the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, to tackle executive pay.
In a further ratcheting-up of pressure on Mr Hester, it also emerged that the RBS chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, has decided to waive his £1.4m shares bonus.
But the Prime Minister, who earlier this year made great play of calling for Sir Fred Goodwin to be stripped of his knighthood for presiding over failure at RBS, yesterday refused to bow to political pressure.
Apparently uncomfortable at being asked by journalists about the bonus following talks with the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, at Chequers yesterday, Mr Cameron insisted that Mr Hester's bonus was "a matter for him" and that installing a new top team at the failed bank, which is 82 per cent owned by the taxpayer, would be even "more expensive" than it is now. » | Jane Merrick, Brian Brady, Mark Leftly, Emily Dugan | Sunday, January 29, 2012
