Bonus Culture Quotes

In the subprime mortgage industry, bankers handed out iffy loans like candy at a parade because such loans meant revenue and, hence, bonuses for executives in the here-and-now.

I work every day - or at least I force myself into office or room. I may get nothing done, but you don't earn bonuses without putting in time. Nothing may come for three months, but you don't earn the fourth without it.

Look, I've always said from the word go many years ago that I felt the whole bonus culture, they need to think very carefully about being detached from the rest of the British public.

People are pretty simple: they do what they are rewarded for doing. If they get multimillion-dollar bonuses by taking huge risks with other people's money - as they still do - then they will continue to take those huge risks, and not give it another thought.

The establishment people tell us that if the workers wanted to share the profits, it was called communism. When management wants to share profits, it's called a bonus.

In the military, they give medals for people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may survive. In business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice others.

In very big companies, you find less entrepreneurialism than you really want to see. Success is defined as 'don't make a mistake.' And you get to be the C.E.O. by outlasting everybody else, then you're there for five or six years, and you want to get your bonus on the way out.

The bonus is really one of the great give-aways in business enterprise. It is the annual salve applied to the conscience of the rich and the wounds of the poor.

There’s a lot of money in making financial products whose risk few understand. Simplicity might be good for economics, but it’s lousy for Wall Street bonuses.

Just as Wall Street needs to break the hold of the bonus culture, which drives risk-taking that is rational for individuals but damaging to the financial system, so science must break the tyranny of the luxury journals. The result will be better research that better serves science and society.

The company must not throw money away on huge bonuses for executives or other frivolities but must share its fate with the workers.

I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.