Banks to publish more bonus details from 2012

Banks will have to publish more details of bonuses paid to top staff from January, making it harder to fudge global rules aimed at curbing excessive risk taking, according to Reuters. The Basel Committee of bank supervisors and central bankers from nearly 30 countries said its new guidance will give a more in-depth snapshot of how senior bankers were being paid, though still stopping short of naming rainmakers. "The Basel Committee believes that these disclosure requirements, developed in consultation with the Financial Stability Board, will support effective market discipline by allowing market participants to assess the quality of a bank's compensation practices and the incentives towards risk taking they support," the committee said in a statement. "The requirements have been designed to be sufficiently granular and detailed to allow meaningful assessments by market participants of a bank's compensation practices, while not requiring disclosure of sensitive or confidential information," it added. Policymakers want to make it harder for banks to reward staff for excessive risk taking and are under pressure to quell public anger in countries like Britain where taxpayers had to bailout out lenders but big bonuses are still being paid. Until now, banks were told to disclose clear, comprehensive and timely information about compensation practices but regulators felt this was too vague and led to inconsistent disclosure. The new guidance sets out a detailed grid that banks will have to complete and publish. Under the new guidance which all regulators in Basel Committee member countries will be obliged to implement banks will have to publish total amounts paid and in what form to senior management and, separately, to other key risk takers. Banks will have to publish the information at least annually and as soon as possible after the detail is available. Lenders will also have to publish detail on one site or document so that access to the information is "readily available and public". Regulators may also ask banks to disclose the details in easy to read table or chart format.