Fred the Shred in line for a £17m pension

He took RBS to brink of collapse. But now...

DISGRACED former RBS boss Fred ‘the shred’ Goodwin is enjoying a £17m pension – after ordinary savers’ retirement pots were wrecked in the financial crisis.

Goodwin, who ran Royal Bank of Scotland into the ground in 2008, survives on £450,000 a year after being forced to quit as chief executive and stripped of his knighthood.

Analysis for the Mail by independent pension expert John Ralfe reveals the 60-year-old boss will have pocketed £16.5m if he lives to 90.

Meanwhile the crisis which Goodwin helped create has destroyed pension returns, forced hundreds of companies to shut their best workplace schemes and compelled many older employees to work far beyond retirement age.

The banker mismanaged RBS to the point of ruin through reckless lending, a toxic culture and a disastrous merger with Dutch bank ABN Amro – meaning it came within hours of running out of cash completely.

The payments to Goodwin sparked fury from experts and politicians.

Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake, cochairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fair Business Banking, said: ‘This is one example of many where the people who caused the financial crisis aren’t the ones paying for it. Ordinary people are still paying, the bankers walked away with these handsome bonuses and pensions.’

Sir Steve Webb, a former pensions minister who is director of policy at savings firm Royal London, said: ‘Most people would think successful business leaders who deliver for their customers and their owners deserve good pay and pensions. But with today’s workers facing pension shortfalls, huge pensions for anyone associated with the financial crash will be a bitter pill to swallow.’

Goodwin walked away a decade ago with a pension of £342,000 a year – which would have been even higher if he hadn’t agreed to give up £200,000 a year following a public outcry. This rises in line with inflation as measured by the retail prices index and is worth an estimated £450,000.

He took a £2.8m lump sum when he left NatWest owner RBS following its £46bn bailout by taxpayers, and has been paid an estimated £5.9m since retiring.

Over the next 30 years he will pocket another £10.6m in real terms – excluding further rises in line with inflation, which will push the actual amount even higher.

Meanwhile the rest of the country has endured a prolonged pension slump. Ultra-low interest rates and a Bank of England money printing programme meant to prevent the financial system from collapsing have devastated the investment returns for defined benefit retirement schemes.

Many have collapsed, others are nursing huge funding gaps and most are no longer open to savers – forcing employees to rely instead on riskier and less lucrative defined contribution schemes linked to the stock market.

According to the Pension Protection Fund, the country’s 5,588 defined benefit schemes have a funding black hole of £65.3bn.

At the same time, workers must save up far more to get a decent pension because of the damage done by rock-bottom interest rates.

A Money Mail investigation last year found that pensioners are retiring on half the income they would have got a decade earlier because of the crisis. A 65-year-old couple with a combined pension fund of £100,000 and cash savings of £40,000 could have generated an annual income of £9,909 in 2007.

They could have collected this sum by purchasing an annuity – an insurance contract that pays an income for life – with their pension fund and putting the cash in the best savings account offered by a bank or building society.

This would have paid a rate of around 6.5pc. But ten years on the most a couple in the same position could get was £5,383, 46pc less.

Goodwin’s good name was ruined by RBS’s collapse, plus revelations the married boss was having an affair with a female colleague during the final days of his reign.

But this week Lord Macpherson, a senior civil servant at the Treasury during the crisis, said Barclays bosses could easily have faced all the fury heaped on Goodwin had they had beaten RBS in a takeover battle for ABN Amro.

Macpherson said: ‘If Barclays had achieved its goal of buying ABN Amro, and not Fred, my guess is that it wouldn’t have been his windows being smashed and his children abused in the playground. It is slightly unfair.’