Business week in review

In profit...

It's always good for a chief executive to know that he or she has the chairman's backing. So, Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester must be positively beaming after Sir Philip Hampton threw himself on the grenade that is the Parliamentary Commission on Banking.

Sir Philip admonished MPs for criticising Hester's £7.8m remuneration deal, arguing the man charged with reviving the mainly state-owned bank's fortunes was only "modestly paid". Hester insisted that he wouldn't give up his bonus, saying "it is entirely appropriate for me to be assessed on what I have done" – and he thinks that he has helped rescue RBS "for society and for its stakeholders".

Another chief executive used to seeing his name in the headlines is BP's Bob Dudley, who was awarded a £2.6m bonus in cash and shares on Tuesday. Including salary, Dudley's payout for 2012 came in at around £3.7m, despite the oil giant's share price falling slightly over the year.

On Wednesday, Liv Garfield continued her assault up Britain's corporate ladder being named as a non-executive director at Tesco. Garfield is the boss at BT Openreach division, which is rolling out superfast broadband in the UK.

...at a loss

Barclays dominated the news agenda early in the week, as the bank attempted to distance itself from the very recent past by axing 3,700 jobs and shutting the structured capital markets division. That was the unit that operated highly complicated tax avoidance schemes and was put under the BBC's forensic microscope ahead of Tuesday's results.

Among all the talk of job losses, business shake-ups and £1.7bn a year cost savings, it would be easy to overlook that the most aptly-named banker in the industry's history, Rich Ricci, has survived the cull of the Bob Diamond-era of executives. However, later in the week Ricci felt compelled to confirm he's not leaving any time soon.

Also on Tuesday, G4S boss Nick Buckles – who is still fighting a one-man campaign to bring back the mullet – and his board totted up the final cost of the security giant's failure to provide enough guards at the London Olympics at £70m. Most of this was the cost of drafting in the military to help out.

On Wednesday, the high-street bloodbath continued as the chief executive of Republic Paul Sweetenham saw the Leeds-based youth clothing retailer fall into administration.