I keep being asked whether business leaders and bankers with knighthoods, CBEs and the rest should be living in terror that they too may be stripped of their honours following the decision of Her Majesty to de-sir Fred Goodwin, on the advice of Whitehall. I don't really think so, because Fred Goodwin was in a class of his own, at least for the UK, in terms of taking business risks that damaged the wealth of taxpayers and undermined prospects for the...

It was Labour's decision to put Stephen Hester's bonus to a Commons vote that gave the RBS chief executive no option but to say he would not be taking £963,000 in shares. As an RBS director put it to me, it would have been a great mistake for the semi-nationalised bank to fight parliament to preserve rewards for its chief executive seen by many as excessive. MPs were expected to vote against the bonus payment - and...

Earlier this month I mentioned that Royal Bank of Scotland's chairman Sir Philip Hampton was entitled to receive 5.17m shares in the bank later this year. These would have been worth £1.4m at the current RBS share price. As I understand it, Sir Philip decided - before the great furore over chief executive Stephen Hester's bonus blew up - that it would not be appropriate to receive these shares, and told the bank's...

The Treasury is convinced that the board of Royal Bank of Scotland has taken its views into account, in paying a reduced bonus to Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland. But it is pretty difficult right now to judge whether that is true. Here is why. Mr Hester is receiving 60% of his maximum bonus entitlement. Now RBS, under enormous political and media...

David Cameron and entourage have rolled into Davos to sell the investment potential of Olympic-year Britain to the business leaders, investors and bankers who throng the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. But in his plenary address, he also delivered something of a lecture to the eurozone on what it needs to do insure the long-term survival and prosperity of the creaking currency union. This is what he said:...

On the official second day of the World Economic Forum here in Davos, I have just interviewed Baudouin Prot, the chairman of BNP Paribas, the huge French bank which is seen as one of Europe's stronger banks. He had two or three pretty interesting claims to make - though I should say at the outset that not everyone will agree with him. First he is convinced that the worst of the eurozone crisis is behind us - thanks...

The UK is certainly not alone in debating whether the widening gap between the super-have and the have-littles is an altogether good thing. It is one of the big talking points here at the World Economic Forum, for an obvious reason. Widening inequalities were widely seen as the necessary price of growing global prosperity during the boom years. But since the great crash of...

Government pressure is building on Royal Bank of Scotland's board to announce that chief executive Stephen Hester is to receive a significantly reduced bonus. I am hearing that the Treasury will inform the company that it believes Mr Hester should receive less than half the bonus of just over £2m that he was awarded last year. So that would be a bonus of less than £1m. However, when I spoke to a Treasury official he...

My train is chugging up the snow-carpeted mountain to the Alpine resort of Davos, once a refuge for consumptives and now, at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, home-from-home for the world's more conspicuous consumers (bankers, hedge fund managers, private-equity stars, inter alia). It is therefore inevitable that a business editor's thoughts turn again to the widening gap between top people's remuneration and the rewards more widely available....

To curb the excesses of executive pay, Vince Cable has passed the buck back to shareholders. Investors will be given the power to formally veto companies' future pay policies - although, as is the case now, if shareholders dislike how businesses have implemented the agreed policy, their votes will not be binding. And Mr Cable also wants investors (and the rest of us) to have slightly simpler and clearer information...