Northern crock's 9m staff bonus

[Stormproof]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... 156549.ece

WORKERS at Northern Rock are set to pocket a £2,200 bonus with their pay packets this Friday.

More than 4,000 staff at the bank that triggered Britain’s credit crisis will share an estimated £8.8million cash bonanza.

The windfall follows the introduction of a company-wide incentive scheme in October last year.

Northern Rock’s target was to pay back a quarter of the Government’s £26billion bailout loan by December 31.

This has been reached – meaning that staff earn ten per cent of their salary.

Boost

They will pocket a further ten per cent when three-quarters of the bailout is repaid.

The payout makes a mockery of Gordon Brown’s pledge to crack down on banking “bonus culture”.

More than 180,000 private shareholders are also still waiting for compensation following Northern Rock’s nationalisation in February last year.

Dennis Grainger, head of the Northern Rock Action Group, said he was “pleased” for the staff.

But he added: “I wish the government would be as fair to the shareholders as they have been to the staff.

“There are so many people who have lost everything, genuinely through no fault of their own.

“Their property has been stolen and I wish the Government would make moves to stand by the shareholders.”

Northern Rock’s finance director Ann Godbehere is quitting in February – after earning £900,000 in 12 months at the bank.

Meanwhile Royal Mail is on track to DOUBLE profits this year after defying the credit crunch.

Bosses said controversial cost-cutting programmes had paid off and the business was now on a “stable footing”.

Profits in the nine months to December were £255million.

This compares with £162million for the whole financial year 2007-2008.

Royal Mail added that all four parts of its business, Parcelforce, European parcels, Royal Mail letters and the Post Office, were in the black for the first time in TWENTY YEARS.


Chairman Allan Leighton said: “The company and its people have come a long way in just six years when Royal Mail was losing more than £1million-a-day and routinely failing quality of service targets.

“A huge amount has been done to put the business on a stable footing - something many believed was not possible.”

Royal Mail has closed nearly 2,500 Post Offices over the past year as part of a £45million cost-cutting drives.

The price of a first and second-class stamp went up last April.

Royal Mail said that overall group revenue rose 3 per cent to £7.2billion in the nine months to December 31.