Hugo Dixon

Shortly after last year’s bonus round I was having lunch with the boss of an investment firm. He told me how he heard a handful of staff had been grumbling about what, by most people’s standards, were still extraordinary pay packages. He called them into his office and told them that, since they were unhappy, they should “Just Go”.

Most of them packed their things and left the firm. But the next day one came back and said he had been misunderstood. My interlocutor said he hadn’t misunderstood him at all. The employee clearly felt he was worth more than he was paid. He should take his luck and go elsewhere as he clearly didn’t have his heart in his current job. He should “Just Go”. And he duly did.

These words “Just Go” stuck in my mind because financial services bosses use them far too rarely. My lunch companion was perhaps an exception because his family is a big shareholder in his firm. Most other bosses are stewards for shareholders – and normally not terribly good stewards at that.

Of course, banking and investment bosses do have some equity in their firms but typically they don’t act like owners. They want to get paid a huge amount themselves. They also want to be surrounded by a phalanx of fawning minions who tell them they are masters of the universe. That boosts their egos. The best way of achieving that is to pay their minions millions, even if it costs the shareholders.

During the bubble years, pay in the financial services industry went through the roof. It wasn’t just for the stars either. Fairly ordinary middle-ranking bankers raked it in. Even after the bubble burst, pay has taken a long time to come down. The 2007 bonus round was a record. Although pay was reined in after Lehman Brothers went bust in 2008, it rebounded the following year.

European integration tends to advance first with squabbling then with fudge. Every country has its national interest to defend. Some politicians appreciate the need to create a strong bloc that can compete effectively with the United States, China and other powers. But that imperative typically plays second fiddle to more parochial concerns with the result that time is lost and suboptimal solutions are chosen.

Amidst the europhoria unleashed by the European Central Bank’s bond-buying plan, it is easy to miss the immense challenges posed by two complex dossiers that have just landed on leaders’ desks: the proposed EADS/BAE merger; and a planned single banking supervisor.

Look first at the plan to create a defence and aerospace giant to rival America’s Boeing. This has been under discussion since at least 1997 when the UK’s Tony Blair, France’s Jacques Chirac and Germany’s Helmut Kohl called on the industry to unify in the face of U.S. competition. London, Paris and Berlin are the key players in this game because they have the major assets.

The European Central Bank’s bond-buying scheme has bought Spain and Italy time to stabilise their finances. But if they drag their heels, the market will sniff them out. It will then be almost impossible to come up with another scheme to rescue the euro zone’s two large problem children and, with them, the single currency.

Mario Draghi’s promise in late July to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro has already had a dramatic impact on Madrid’s and Rome’s borrowing costs. Ten-year bond yields, which peaked at 7.6 percent and 6.6 percent respectively a few days before the ECB president made his first comments, had collapsed to 5.7 percent and 5.1 percent on Sept. 7.

Most of the decline came before Draghi spelt out last Thursday the details of how the plan will work. What makes the scheme powerful is that the ECB has not set any cap to the amount of sovereign bonds it will buy in the market. The central bank’s financial firepower is theoretically unlimited, whereas the euro zone governments’ own bailout funds do not have enough money to rescue both Spain and Italy.