Confirmed: Champagne in Canary Wharf as bankers’ bonus cap is scrapped
The cap for bankers bonuses’ will be scrapped, Kwasi Kwarteng has confirmed in today’s mini-budget.
The Conservative chancellor made the announcement today, saying the move will help to keep money in London as a financial hub.
He told the commons growth would only come with a “strong financial services sector” and that depended on having “global banks to create jobs here, invest here, and pay taxes here in London, not Paris, not Frankfurt, not New York.”
“All the bonus cap did was to push up the basic salaries of bankers, or drive activity outside Europe. It never capped total remuneration, so let’s not sit here and pretend otherwise.”
So we’re going to get rid of it. And to reaffirm the UK’s status as the world’s financial services centre, I will set out an ambitious package of regulatory reforms later in the Autumn.”
The move was criticised by Labour Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, who called the mini-budget a raft of policies for “casino economics”.
“12 years of Tory government have left us with lower growth, lower investment, lower productivity, and today – the lowest consumer confidence since records began. The only things that are going up are inflation, interest rates and bankers’ bonuses.