Hester bites back in the row over bonuses at RBS

Royal Bank of Scotland launched a concerted fightback yesterday against the mounting outrage over its decision to spend £785m on bonuses despite reporting a £2bn loss – almost double the previous year's figure .

Stephen Hester, the chief executive, insisted that the bank was "in a vastly better position" than when he arrived, and hit back at critics of its bonuses, describing the debate as "damaging".

He also said it could hamper the bank's attempts to return the taxpayer's £45bn investment in the company, which has become the poster child for much of what was wrong with the industry in the run-up to the financial crisis.

"The noise around RBS is damaging to the prospect of achieving the goals everyone needs of it," Mr Hester said. "So far, in the latest three years, we have overcome that noise, and we will try to keep doing that, but no one should be under any illusions that you can't have your cake and eat it."

The bonus pool was split, with £390m going to investment bankers for 2011, a fall of 58 per cent from 2010. This still represented an average bonus of £22,900. The rest of the money was distributed across the remainder of the bank.

Mr Hester and Sir Philip passed on payments of nearly £1m and £1.4m respectively. Other executives are not expected to follow suit.

RBS is cutting thousands of jobs at its Global Banking & Markets (GBM) division – the name for the investment bank. It delivered a £95m loss during the final quarter of the year, but was profitable overall, producing earnings of £1.6bn against £3.4bn a year earlier.

The bank said this was no worse than rivals and pointed out that competitors – such as Barclays Capital – were more generous with bonuses.

But average staff costs were stable at about £144,000 each, and unions remain furious. The banking union Unite issued an angry statement, criticising the bank's pay offer to ordinary staff.

RBS shares, for which the taxpayer paid an average of 49.9p for its 82 per cent stake, rose 1.39p to 28.72p.