Many bankers have been struggling to keep up their standard of living on salaries as high as £500,000-a-year due to their bonuses not increasing as quickly as they expected.
Richard Kingdon, an addiction counsellor based in the City of London, told the Huffington Post UK that the bankers would be struggling on £500,000-a-year as "they've got no common sense".
"People in the City are spending £50,000 on a weekend with prostitutes, gambling, and cocaine so why wouldn't they get into trouble? A lot of them have taken big hits because they've not got their bonuses. A lot of them are pissed off."
A head of HR at one British bank told efinancialcareers.com, speaking anonymously: “Our mid-ranking people are struggling. If you’re earning less than £500k, it’s very difficult to buy a house in central London and to pay school fees for several children."
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Kingdon, who works at City Beacon, told HuffPostUK: "Many of my clients have no qualms about spending twenty to thirty grand on holidays, cars, designer clothes and much more on school fees."
Bankers enjoyed a bonus pool of nearly £4 billion in April, marketing an 82.2% rise (£1.857 billion) over last year, according to official data from the Office for National Statistics. George Osborne has launched a legal challenge against an EU bank bonus cap, with the Bank of England concerned that it could breach some bankers' human rights.
One banker complained: “My guy who borrowed £750k has seen his compensation coming down year-after-year. It’s very hard for him – he’s spending a significant proportion of his income servicing that debt.
Bankers working in the City of London on £500,000 would be earning nearly 20 times the average UK salary of £26,000. The UK has more millionaire bankers than the rest of the EU combined.
The concern about mid-ranking bankers suffering on just £500,000 comes as the chancellor tried to help the Royal Bank of Scotland dodge a £471,000 salary cap. By comparison, new RBS chief executive Ross McEwan gets an annual salary of £1 million-a-year.
