Massey honours head of UK bank
Massey University has given its most prestigious alumni award to a former Manawatu man who now leads the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) chief executive Ross Mcewan has been awarded the Sir Geoffrey Peren Medal, named after Massey’s founder, at the university’s 2017 Distinguished Alumni Awards.
Mcewan has returned to New Zealand to receive the award at a function in Auckland on Friday.
He said getting the award from his former university was ‘‘an absolute honour’’ and a reminder of what were probably the best years of his life.
‘‘You’ve come out of school, you’re away from home. You’re actually meeting lots of really exciting people and getting a bit of an education on the way through there,’’ Mcewan said.
‘‘[Massey] was also the place where I met my wife.’’
Mcewan graduated from Massey in 1979, where he studied for his bachelor of business studies in Palmerston North, long before he became the head of the Scottish bank in 2013.
Massey University spokesman James Gardiner said the selection panel looked at Mcewan’s career as a whole. They felt the fact he was chosen to lead the bank, with its well-documented challenges, was a reflection of his ‘‘outstanding business and professional performance’’.
Mcewan has recently faced scrutiny in Britain over the pay packets of the bank’s top brass.
The Guardian reported Mcewan made over $5.3 million last year, and the bonuses paid to top management, more than $28m for 2016. The RBS has racked up a total loss of $103 billion (58b pounds) since 2008.
Mcewan, though, has refused to take the bonuses for the past three years.
Once, briefly, the world’s largest bank by assets, the RBS is in the middle of a vast, multi-year restructuring, which includes asset sales and job cuts.
RBS has not made an annual profit since 2008, when it got a 45 billion pound (NZ$117B billion) bailout from the British Government after coming close to collapse. ‘‘This is a bank that has been on a remarkable journey,’’ Mcewan said in the statement in February. ‘‘We still have further to go. But the next three years will not be the same as the past three.’’