Fred The Shred’s gold-plated pension hits £545k a year
THE disgraced banker known as ‘Fred The Shred’ who brought Britain’s biggest lender to the brink of collapse is believed to be on a gold-plated pension worth £545,000 a year.
The huge sum, which is far higher than previously reported, is being paid to Fred Goodwin, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland – now renamed NatWest.Goodwin presided over the ‘reckless’ expansion of the bank, which had to be rescued by taxpayers in a £45.5billion bailout at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.
He was later stripped of his knighthood amid public outrage at the damage that the bank’s meltdown caused to the wider British economy.
Thousands of small businesses went to the wall when the bank pulled the plug on them, while taxpayers are still on the hook for tens of billions of pounds after the share price tanked and never recovered. Goodwin took early retirement and walked off with a controversial pension deal that guaranteed him £342,500 a year for life when he was forced out of RBS in 2009.
A special MoS investigation into the bank suggests the value of that pension has since soared because the annual payout he receives is linked to the rate of inflation.
Experts reckon that it would now cost £14 million for a man of Goodwin’s age – 65 – to buy a similar amount of pension income.
His massive windfall was slammed last night as ‘egregious’ and ‘a reward for failure’.
‘We should all be livid,’ said Andy Agathangelou, founder of campaign group Transparency Task Force. ‘All the time the senior folk get off lightly.’
Ian Fraser, author of Shredded: Inside RBS, The Bank That Broke Britain, said: ‘His egregious pension has come to symbolise much that was wrong with the banking sector – not least the rewards for failure,’
NatWest, where taxpayers still own a near 40 per cent stake, has sought to draw a line under its toxic past but is mired in fresh controversy over the Nigel Farage debanking affair.
Chief executive Alison Rose was forced to quit after she confirmed details of the former Ukip leader’s bank account to a BBC journalist. She is said to be in talks about a pay-off worth up to £11million.
Goodwin now lives in leisure, spending his days shooting and playing golf near NatWest’s sprawling headquarters outside Edinburgh, sources say.
He became Britain’s most notorious banker during the financial crisis, earning the sobriquet ‘Fred The Shred’ for his aggressive management style. Friends say he has shown little remorse for the carnage he caused.
He finally caved in to relentless political and public pressure and agreed to reduce his annual pension from £703,000 in June 2009.
Goodwin could not be reached for comment.