Bankers ... or just footballers under a different guise?

So being a young "about town" dude, I spent a couple of hours on Saturday night watching a re-run of the HBOS/RBS quartet being grilled by the Treasury committee (Note to self: get a life!).
Other than Sir Tom McKillop (the ex-RBS chairman) being asked whether he had taken legal advice for a charge of criminal negligence (ouch), I am not sure it revealed anything particularly interesting.

But it's clear that us ordinary mortals are a little irritated by news of bonuses being awarded to various folk from banks as pointed out by Jon Howard. The answer that came back from Lord Turner on the Andrew Marr show this morning was along the lines of :"we have to attract talented people, so getting rid of bonuses would be counter-productive".

OK, so what will change? Answer - fuck all. There'll still be large cash sums/pension contributions paid irrespective of performance. Now I, like most others, only get bonuses based on company performance ... company does well = employees do well. It's a basic maths equation that seems to be overlooked by these financial bods.

But the thing that bothers me most is: why are bonuses paid out in cash rather than shares/share options ... the senior folk at companies are judged on shareholder return (which means share value and level of dividends), so why aren't there bonuses inextricably linked to this metric? I suspect this would mean that the level of bonuses would be smaller or more difficult to achieve ... well, tough shit.

Or even easier ... just give them a higher salary: because the current bonus structure doesn't seem to be really based on above-expectation performance.

Or are the senior finance bods just the commercial equivalent of footballers ... doesn't matter what they do, they still get paid a bloody fortune.