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Amid PPI scandal, HSBC bank pays £1m bonuses

It has been revealed that though the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) scandal continues to cause public fury, banking giant HSBC has paid over £1m in bonuses to 192 top employees. The bank announced that profits had risen by 15 per cent, to come in at £13.8bn for 2011.

Of the 192 employees that were each paid a bonus of more than £1m, 64 live within the UK. HSBC is the first company to reveal their eight highest paid employees in keeping with the new Treasury rules, saying that these top eight shared a £30m bonus figure between them. Chief executive Stuart Gulliver took a bonus of £2.16m alone, with the sum being £1.3m higher if he had not already had his bonus docked because of the missold PPI scandal. Overall, this means that Mr Gulliver has received £7.16m for the year, bringing criticism from many who say that the UK banking sector is still in crisis.

There has been much debate over banking bonuses in the past, due to the extreme size. This has been contested even more since the PPI scandal broke, with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) already having fined HSBC £10.5m for their role in misselling insurance to elderly individuals. With many officials calling for bonus cuts, HSBC has indicated that it has slashed bonuses, but top executives have still walked away with enormous sums of money. For those who are still waiting for compensation payments to be made, the latest news of bonus payouts will not be welcomed.