FSA's departing boss refuses to accept bonus

Wednesday 20th June 2012

Hector Sants, outgoing chief executive of the FSA, turned down a total performance-related bonus of £143,750 last year. At his request, the sum was paid by the FSA under the Workplace Giving UK scheme to the Art Room, a registered charity.

The sum he turned down for 2011/12 was a 12-month performance-related bonus of £115,000 plus a further bonus of £28,750.

The three-month bonus, covering January to March, was a one-off, because the FSA has been re-aligning awards with its financial year. Had he taken the bonuses, Sants would have earned a total of £835,731. He has turned down previous bonus money.

Sants is due to leave the FSA at the end of this month, to go on gardening leave for the rest of the year. It is understood he will continue to be paid as usual for the next six months.

Margaret Cole, who resigned as executive director from the FSA with effect from March 31, took a £90,000 bonus for 12 months plus £23,000 for three months, taking her overall pay to £615,939 – massively up from the £263,686 she earned in total the year before.

She, too, is on gardening leave, until August 31.

Martin Wheatley, appointed to the FSA only last September, earned a total of £399,657 which included bonuses of £29,000 and £21,500 – a total bonus of £55,000 in the space of just six months. Wheatley is future chief executive of the new Financial Conduct Authority, one of the two bodies taking over from the FSA next year.

FSA chairman Adair Turner received £500,474, barely changed from the financial year 2010/2011.

All the amounts compare with what the Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, gets: £308, 252.

In his report – his last – Sants said the FSA had faced a “very difficult macroeconomic environment while at the same time being required to deliver considerable structural change”. He also reported that tight cost control had led to an under-spend on its original budget of 3.5%.

Sants, looking back over the last five years, said in his report that during the financial crisis, the FSA gave its utmost: “I do believe that in the circumstances, there is nothing more the FSA could have done which would have materially changed the outcome. I also believe that without our actions, it would have been worse.”

He added: “Above all, what I am most proud of is not what the FSA has achieved, nor how bad it would have been if we did not take the actions we did, but the way we have responded to how we go about regulation, and our willingness to learn and change in the face of difficult conditions and what has at times felt like relentless criticism.”

The FSA’s annual report is likely to be its last before the transition to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This change will occur in early 2013. Between now and then, the FSA is working to a ‘twin peaks’ model.