Leaders at today’s Group of Twenty summit, in Pittsburgh, pledged to crack down on risk-taking by financial companies, adding that they have drafted a plan that will force banks to tie bonuses to long-term performance and raise the amount of capital they hold. “There is no return to the bad old days,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown told reporters. “There is no going back to systems of bonuses that were based simply on short-term speculation and not on the long- term success of companies.” According to Leon Brittan, a former European Union trade commissioner and the vice-chairman of UBS, they weren’t just paying lip service to the still-angry public (above). The revamp of regulation is “for real,” he told Bloomberg News. No word on whether they responded with “For real, for real,” causing Brittan to quip, “Reals.”
G-20 to Curb Bank Pay, Coordinate More as Crisis Ebbs [Bloomberg]
