Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 30 April 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Brian Goggin:

Okay. Thank you, Chairman. What I was trying to explain to you, Deputy - and I'll be as full on this as I can be - prior to 2005-06 all of the discretionary bonus was determined by profit. The reason that it changed in 2005-06 was to align the incentive structure directly to the strategy that I implemented. And if you recall the comments I made in my opening remarks, I said that the Bank of Ireland Group faced a number of issues when I took over as chief executive. Its total shareholder return was in decline, it had a multiplicity of different systems and processes, its costs were out of line. So, I put in place a very comprehensive strategy to deal with that and I wanted to ensure that the top executives were motivated and incentivised to deliver on that plan. And that's why I removed the 100% profit as a determinant of profit ... of bonus, and I switched the bank in the first year to 70%. And it gradually declined, as you've correctly pointed out, because the plan began to deliver. It was a three-year plan. The plan began to deliver on the costs. So, as the plan began to deliver, our focus shifted to delivering superior profit performance.

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