LONDON – Stephen Hester, CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, which owns Providence-based Citizens Financial Group Inc., will not take a bonus for 2009, a source told Bloomberg News.
Hester, 49, will forego a bonus estimated at roughly 1.6 million pounds ($2.5 million) but will still receive his base salary of 1.2 million pounds ($1.86 million). RBS is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report on Thursday. Its total bonus pool for 2009 has been estimated at 1.3 billion pounds ($2 billion).
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The British government has owned 84 percent of RBS since bailing out the bank at the height of the financial crisis. Lord Peter Mandelson, the government’s business secretary, on Sunday called on Hester to decline the bonus.
“If further down the line, in years to come, he has done well and turned around RBS, he deserves something back for it – and I would be the first to say so – but not now,” Mandelson told the BBC.
Hester took the helm of RBS in November 2008, succeeding Fred Goodwin. Hester had previously been CEO of British Land Co., one of that country’s largest real-estate investment trusts.
