(Bloomberg) -- The UK will consider ditching more restrictions on banker bonuses as the country looks for ways to become more competitive on the global financial stage.
The Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority could shorten the waiting period for top managers to get their bonuses to five years, down from as long as eight years, according to a consultation published on Tuesday. For other key risk-takers, it might be shortened to four years.
“We should not return to the very dangerous pay structures that were commonly in place before 2008, but these proposals will reduce bureaucracy and support responsible risk-taking,” Sam Woods, chief executive officer of the PRA, said in the statement.
The UK has long faced criticism that its stringent bonus rules — which are often stricter than those in places like New York — were hurting the country’s competitiveness and made it difficult for banks to retain talent in London. Woods had already signaled in a speech last month that the rules would be revisited.
As part of its latest review, the UK will consider reducing the number of individuals subject to rules on their pay and allowing partial payment of bonuses from year one rather than year three for some bankers.
Regulators will also consider removing guidelines that prohibit banks from paying dividends or interest on share-based deferred awards, as well as ones that require senior bankers to wait up to a year before being able to sell those shares.
London’s finance industry has already been in the process of changing bonuses for top traders and investment bankers after the UK ditched a European Union-era bonus cap that had limited awards for so-called material risk takers to twice their annual salary.
Those moves meant that London bankers can now have paychecks that look more like the bonus-heavy packages of their counterparts in the US, often worth several multiples of their fixed pay.
The proposal would bring the “UK’s rules more in line with other countries,” the regulators said in the statement. “They should also help to reverse a trend whereby banks have put a higher amount of total financial reward into fixed pay, which is less reactive to shocks, rather than bonuses, which can be adjusted down if events turn out worse than expected.”
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