Will they never learn?
You would think that after the banking excesses of recent years some semblance of sense would have prevailed by now. But, sadly, it seems not.
The financial packages of a minority of cosseted executives in the sector still have the ability to make jaws drop.
Taxpayer-owned RBS has handed out £18.25 million in share options to 11 already well-paid directors.
New chief executive Ross McEwan alone will pick up £3m when his shares vest in three years that’s more than 100 times the UK national average wage.
And RBS is far from alone.
Lloyds which, lest we forget, was also propped up by billions of taxpayers’ cash has awarded boss Antonio Horta-Osorio £900,000 in share options on top of his base salary of a paltry £1.1m.
Throw in other incentives and the Portuguese reportedly could take home in excess of £7m this year.
Barclays no stranger to executive pay controversy following the hiring of Bob Diamond in 2010 is topping up chief executive Anthony Jenkins’ package with £950,000 in shares, while HSBC has got in on the act with a £1.7m share award for its CEO Stuart Gulliver.
But for me the real sickener from this year’s round of pay awards was that earmarked for senior Co-op Group executives.
The proposed remuneration for CEO Euan Sutherland who shocked the City by resigning yesterday extended to £3.6m and was made up of a base salary of £1.5m, a £1.5m retention payment, pension contributions and compensation for buying him out of his previous contract.
A further £1.8m including a £900,000 retention payment was heading the way of chief operating officer Richard Pennycook, although his pay as new interim CEO is now unclear.
Six other executives were due to pick up salaries of at least £500,000 each, topped up with retention payments taking them into the seven-figure pay bracket.
This for an executive team at the helm of the mutual during the greatest crisis in its long and proud history.
While the blame for losses that could touch £2 billion may not lie at the door of those individuals, it still seems crass and inappropriate for such large sums to be paid out while an institution built on ethical investment remains on life support.
Inevitably the banks were quick to defend their pay policies, trotting out the well-worn lines that they have to pay the going rate to attract and keep the best talent.
That is an argument I have always found curious as it is not one I have found to be transferable to the majority of other major UK economic sectors.
But in this case it also appears to be a smokescreen for a move to avoid new European Union rules which place a cap on bonuses of 100% of annual salary, or 200% with shareholder approval.
The cap is opposed both by the banks and by the UK Government, which fears London could be hit as a global financial centre if prescriptive limits on pay are introduced.
Personally, that is a position I find difficult to get on board with as the sky-high pay packages seen in the City over the past decade have demonstrably not delivered the financial prosperity that we might have expected they would.
I have said before that a good day’s work deserves a good day’s pay, and success should rightly be rewarded.
But I simply cannot see how pay packages in the multi millions can be justified UK Prime Minister David Cameron gets just over £140,000 for running the country, after all and I would appeal to remuneration committees to show restraint when making settlements.
If sense still does not prevail, shareholders must hold boards to account for their actions by registering their displeasure by voting against excessive pay deals when the AGM comes around.