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Thursday, March 4, 2010

Top HSBC executives receive £9m bonus

Stuart Gulliver, head of investment banking at HSBC, has been awarded an estimated £9 million bonus for 2009.

The banker is thought to be the highest earner at the firm and will receive the figure on top of his £800,000 annual salary.

News of the sum emerged after Michael Geoghegan, HSBC’s chief executive officer, donated his £4 million bonus to charity as part of a bid to diffuse public anger over banker bonuses.

However, Stephen Green, HSBC chairman, claimed that Mr Geoghegan was underpaid by the bank, explaining that the head of the organisation was not among the top 150 best paid CEOs in the FTSE 100.

A unnamed shareholder in HSBC told the Financial Times: "Mr Green's determination to push on pay is a bad misjudgment. It is a strange thing to push at this moment. It is not the time or the place, particularly since the results were disappointing."

Official figures from HSBC for 2009 showed that the bank recorded a profit of $7.1 billion during the year.

The figure is 24 per cent lower than the amount from 2008.

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