Barclays Reports Profit Doubled in 2009

This article relates to the issue of top executives earning big bonuses and the presence of an unequal income distribution. Even though this London bank's profits more than doubled last year, its top two leaders, the chief executive and president, gave up their bonuses for the second year in a row in response to the public anger over bank executives taking large bonuses. Other members of Barclays executive committee will have their bonuses given to them over a three year time span, all depending on how profitable their unit is. This is not the only company where this is happening in Britain. Royal Dutch Shell said that pay practices for top management positions were changing. The salaries of top executives are being frozen until 2011 at levels that are 20 percent below those of the previous executives for this company in response to shareholder uprising last year. I think this is interesting because it does not seem that executives here in the US are taking pay cuts, even in response to the recession and the current low earnings of companies.