Central banker warns on anti-bank anger

Politicians should beware of stirring up anger against the financial sector, central bank president Nout Wellink said in an interview with the NRC on Thursday.


‘You have to be extremely careful with anger. You should be keeping a cool head and try to explain things,’ Wellink said.
The wide public debate about the pay package promised to ING’s new CFO Patrick Flynn was not in the interests of the government or industry, Wellink said. There has been widespread criticism of the decision by ING to give Flynn a golden hello of 400,000 shares. The bank has had a €10bn government bail-out.
‘We must not demonise this sector which employs 100,000 people. No one could have predicted this crisis,’ the Financieele Dagblad quoted the central bank president as saying.
Although bonuses were coming down in Anglo American countries, banks such as ING had to be able to compete to attract the best people, he said.
Wellink also said he had no plans to apologise for the role played by the financial sector in the global economic crisis. ‘If you apologise without meaning it, then there is something wrong with your integrity,’ he was reported as saying by the NRC.
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