Jonny Harrison is sailing to Australia from the UK via the Panama Canal before he starts work in Sydney on a secondment at his firm PricewaterhouseCoopers »
Andrew Hebden is Assistant Editor (Business) of The Journal »
Katie Pringle has started her own business, Rock, Paper, Scissors »
Andrew Mernin is the Digital Journalist for nebusiness »
Matthew Rippon is an IP lawyer for BHP Law »
Formerly editor of a national business lifestyle magazine, Jez Davison is a business writer for the Evening Gazette in Teesside »
Ross Smith, Head of Policy and Research at the North-East Chamber of Commerce »
Julian Christopher from Footprint Public Relations, on media and marketing »
Norma Foster from the North East Regional Portal writes about e-business »
Ian Brown, Northumberland farmer and businessman writes about the agricultural industry »
Accessibilty Champion Steve Wilkinson on the importance of inclusion »
Andrea Wilkinson of Shared Interest is visiting Swaziland to deliver business training »
Jonathan Wheatley from Stokesley-based MC Ware writes about IT matters »
Mark Lisgo is a Northeasterner who works for law firm Eversheds in Abu Dhabi, UAE »
Adam Lopardo is director of the Sponsors Club for Arts & Business, bringing business and art together »
Curator Danielle Pender shares the peaks and pitfalls of working with 21 designers on a month-long exhibition »
Paul Williamson is from Deloitte »WHY is it that this country is so quick to criticise people for being successful?
The news that five directors at banking giant HSBC are set to share a £120m windfall during the next three years has been met with incredulity by the business world.
How can this be so, the critics cried, when the UK’s largest bank announced write-downs of around £8.7bn only three months ago?
What they failed to understand, however, was that although the decline in the US housing market had hit the value of HSBC’s loans, annual profits still rose 10% to $24.2bn (£12.2bn), up from $22.08bn the year before.
Amid the current financial chaos, that takes some doing.
At the time of the trading announcement, HSBC said the banking group was fundamentally strong and it had increased the shareholder dividend by 11% to 90 cents per share.
Its results were better than many in the City had predicted, so why are the directors being given such a hard time for steering the ship through extremely choppy economic waters?
Besides, £120m hardly qualifies as a cash bonanza, especially when chiefs at Citigroup, Bank of America and Bank of China - HSBC’s main competitors - are reportedly being rewarded with handsome incentive-based packages.
In some instances, however, the anger at fat cat pay-days is wholly justified. Take Adam Crozier, for example. The Royal Mail chief received more than £3m in pay, pensions and incentives in the last financial year, despite overseeing the closure of 2,500 post offices around the UK. The sums don’t add up on this one.
The problem is that many critics believe big bonuses are only justified in an economic boom. But the best bosses - including those at HSBC - prove their mettle when the going gets tough.
Perhaps critics should reserve their wrath for the grossly valued, over-pampered Premier League soccer “stars� whose finest efforts have resulted in England’s non-attendance at this year’s Euro 2008 Championships.
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