A sign for a branch of HSBC
(Picture: PA Wire)Arch defenders of capitalism like to say that a rising tide lifts all boats.
This assumes we all own a boat, but leaving that aside, the idea is that inequalities don’t matter too much as long as everyone is getting richer.
They just love that idea over at HSBC, where chief executive Noel Quinn’s boat is riding a tidal wave.
He landed £4.8 million in pay and another £4.1 million in shares for 2021, a cool near £9 million reward for his undoubted cleverness.
The language used to justify this in the company annual report is a masterpiece of corporate nonsense. There are annual incentive scorecards, value creation incentives, long-term strategic plans and much more.
Read it, if you can stand it.
The simple truth, as the skilled and likable Quinn would admit, is that the returns are a function of profits. And banks do well when economies are improving and interest rates are rising.
That’s it. These payments are a reward simply for not screwing things up.
The pity is, that under Quinn, his finance director Ewen Stevenson and chairman Mark Tucker, HSBC is a much better business than it was before.
Memories of it money laundering for Mexican drug cartels and being fined for that in 2012 are sort of fading.
Other scandals come and go, but, well it is a very big bank.
In some ways, Quinn’s pay doesn’t matter for a business valued at £110 billion.
If you were a nurse being grudgingly offered a 3% pay rise you might not see it like that. And you might note since that pay rise is less than inflation, your boat is sinking, not rising.
