Mr Hester may deserve a bonus, but not yet, the business secretary says Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester, will not take his bonus this year, the BBC has learned.He was reportedly to get shares worth £1.6m though the RBS board was not making a final decision until its results were announced later this week. The news came after Business Secretary Lord Mandelson told the BBC that Mr Hester should forgo the payment this year until he had proved his worth. RBS is 84% taxpayer-owned and is set to post losses of about £5bn for 2009. This would be down from losses of £24bn for 2008. BBC business editor Robert Peston said it would have been controversial if Mr Hester had taken any bonus. "According to a banking source, Hester believes that public hostility to the bank would increase if he were to take a bonus and would be counter productive to his goal of steering Royal Bank away from politics," our editor said. "He believes that RBS must stop being a political football if it is to recover sufficiently to allow it to be privatised at a profit for taxpayers.[Read more...]