City reward: Crash course?

The banking sector remains understandably defensive about the role bonuses played in the financial crisis of 2007-08. Take Tony Williams, HR director, global banking and markets, RBS, for example, who says: “You could argue that the outsized returns that many investment banks made for investors and stakeholders before the crash were positively motivated by bonuses.” Similarly, Robert Potter, group head of HR at JLT, and head of the City HR Association, says: “If it’s felt that remuneration may have contributed to the environment in which the financial crisis occurred, then it only contributed to a proportion of the crisis.”