It's not all bad news folks. See Robert Peston's Blog for the BBC today:
Royal Bank of Scotland has confirmed that its chief executive, Stephen Hester, will receive a "new Share Bank scheme" award (RBS's name for a bonus) of £2.04m for his performance in 2010. It will be paid in shares, and he won't be able to get his hand on all of it for three years.
It means that Hester will receive a fraction of the sum likely to be awarded to his opposite number at Barclays, Bob Diamond (with some of the difference in their respective pay explained by the fact that RBS is more than 80% owned by taxpayers).
RBS also confirms that its investment bankers - employed by its GBM division - will share in bonuses totalling "less than £950m for 2010." That compares with the 2009 bonus pool of £1.3bn. A proportion of that drop in bonuses stems from the fact that GBM had a better year in 2009: not all of the fall represents pay restraint imposed by the board of RBS as a result of the Merlin talks.
Somewhat ironic that they have called such daylight robbery 'Project Merlin'. Too late, very costly and unfit for purpose.......