Mr Goodwin (left), former chief executive of RBS which is now 70 per cent state-owned and announced Britain's biggest-ever corporate losses on Thursday, has refused government requests to voluntarily give up part of his pension pot. -- PHOTO: AP
LONDON - BRITISH'S government was locked in a row on Friday over how it let the ex-boss of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) claim a massive pension, drawing a claim Prime Minister Gordon Brown was 'asleep on the job.'
Mr Brown said he was 'angry' at the 'unjustifiable and unacceptable' pension handed to Sir Fred Goodwin, 50, which is worth nearly US$1 million (S$1.5 million) a year for life. Mr Brown is also taking legal advice.
Brown calls Goodwin to forgo pension
PRIME Minister Gordon Brown himself again called on Sir Fred Goodwin to waive the pension on Friday, adding: 'The anger that the public have is anger that I have as well.
'This is unjustifiable, unacceptable and we are going to clean up the banks so this doesn't happen again.'
Mr Goodwin, former chief executive of RBS which is now 70 per cent state-owned and announced Britain's biggest-ever corporate losses on Thursday, has refused government requests to voluntarily give up part of his pension pot.
He claims the government, specifically Treasury minister Lord Paul Myners, was aware of his pension arrangements months ago and a cut in his entitlement is 'not warranted.'
'I am told that the topic of my pension was specifically raised with you by both the chairman of the (RBS) group remuneration committee and the group chairman,' Goodwin wrote to Myners on Thursday. 'You indicated that you were aware of my entitlement and that no further gestures would be required.'
But Myners' boss, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, told lawmakers on Thursday that ministers only learned a week ago of the size of the pension handed to Goodwin by RBS' board.
Goodwin quit last October as the government stepped in to save the bank from collapse, forfeiting a year's salary that was promised in his original severance package.
The controversy over his pension prompted Mr George Osborne, finance spokesman for the main opposition Conservatives, to claim that the government knew about the package all along and was now trying to cover its tracks.
'Mr Gordon Brown and Mr Alistair Darling are supposed to be looking after taxpayers' money, they're supposed to be looking after the interests of the British people and they were asleep on the job,' he told ITV television on Friday.
'The problem for the government and for Lord Myners, who's a government minister, is that they knew all along about this pension,' he charged. -- AFP
