The UK’s largest financial firms have handed their board members a near-80% pay rise since 2009.

Median pay for the three highest earning non-executive directors (NEDs) in each of the FTSE 100’s 17 financial firms surged from £90,700 in 2009 to £162,000 in 2019.

Board members overseeing the UK’s largest banks, insurance and investment firms are earning 79% more than they did a decade earlier, despite being in part-time roles.

The largest increases have been at Lloyds Banking Group, where top NEDs are earning 257% more than in 2009; the London Stock Exchange Group, where there has been a 219% rise; and investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown, where fees have jumped 170%.

The median number of meetings now sitting at 26. The busiest among them sat through 48 meetings last year.

 The High Pay Centre said some board members were already earning more than 99% of the UK workforce, despite committing just a fraction of the hours.

“Many financial services firms paying six-figure sums to their NEDs will also have low-paid staff in branches, call centres or administrative roles struggling to make ends meet,” Luke Hildyard, the director of the High Pay Centre thinktank, said.

UK’s biggest financial firms have given boards near-80% pay rise since 2009 | Business | The Guardian

 Information comes from a 2020 Credit Suisse Global Wealth report reveals that:

 The top 1% of households globally own 43% of all personal wealth while the bottom 50% have only 1%. 

 The 1% are all millionaires in net wealth (after debt) and there are 52m of them. 

 Within this 1%, there are 175,000 ultra-wealthy people with over $50m in net wealth.

That’s a minuscule 0.1% owning 25% of the world’s wealth!

 The Credit Suisse global wealth report analyses the household wealth of 5.2 billion people across the globe. Household wealth is made up of the financial assets (stocks, bonds, cash, pension funds) and property (houses etc.) owned.  And the report measures this, net of debt. 

Most shocking is the still huge inequality of household wealth globally as shown by the wealth pyramid 

At the apex of the wealth pyramid, the report estimates that at the start of this year there were 175,690 ultra-high net worth (UHNW) adults in the world with net worth exceeding US$50 million.

At the end of 2019, North America and Europe accounted for 55% of total global wealth, with only 17% of the world adult population. In contrast, the population share was three times larger than the wealth share in Latin America, four times the wealth share in India, and nearly ten times the wealth share in Africa.

Wealth differences within countries are even more pronounced. The top 1% of wealth holders in a country typically own 25%–40% of all wealth, and the top 10% usually account for 55%–75%. At the end of 2019, millionaires around the world – which number exactly 1% of the adult population – accounted for 43.4% of global net worth. In contrast, 54% of adults with wealth below US$10,000 (i.e. pretty much nothing)  together mustered less than 2% of global wealth.

1% own 43% of global wealth, while billions have no wealth at all – Climate & Capitalism (climateandcapitalism.com)

 A Christmas Fancy

There’s those who don’t believe in Santa Claus,

Yet past folk had King Winter visit them

Long, long before the star in Bethlehem.

Then, later, riding through the snows

Came Jul astride eight legged Sleipner, blue cloaked

And gifting the good. After Senlac Hill

Lord Christmas went from castle to hovel,

While Tudor winter revels in log smoked

Halls were in the charge of Captain Christmas.

Even the Lord Protector’s severe ways

Were subverted by the mumming plays

When Old Father Christmas first made his pass.

And Santa? He brooks no borders so he

Can bring to each his need, and all for free.

D. A.

 People of Black African ethnicity in the United Kingdom typically have just one-eighth of the wealth of white British people, the Resolution Foundation said.

People of Black African ethnicity had on average 24,000 pounds ($32,175) of family wealth per adult, rising to 31,000 pounds ($41,569) for people of Bangladeshi ethnicity and nearly 42,000 pounds ($56,320) for those with mixed white and Black Caribbean ethnicity. People of white British ethnicity held 197,000 pounds ($264,166) of family wealth per adult, the Resolution Foundation said.

At least half of Black African, Bangladeshi and Black Caribbean ethnicity households held less than 1,000 pounds ($1,340) in savings before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

“Despite significant progress in closing education and employment gaps between different ethnic groups, these wealth gaps are likely to persist,” George Bangham, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, said. “Even high earners will struggle to save their way to being high wealth, while white British people are much more likely to inherit significant sums than those of other ethnic groups.”

UK’s ethnic wealth gap: Difference between groups widens | Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera

 After the financial crisis and the ensuing great recession that started in April 2008, the unemployment rate rose from 5.5% to 7.5% over 12 months. Over the same time period, wage growth – as measured by single-month average weekly earnings in the private sector – also fell sharply. This is what usually happens in a slump.

 But not this time around, in 2020. Something weird is happening to wage growth.

In the US, there was a big rise in the unemployment rate to just under 20% in April, before falling back steadily to 7.1% in November. But wage growth actually rose sharply, and was 5.9% in November. 

The picture is the same in the UK. After an initial drop into negative territory earlier this year, there was a sharp rise for -2.9% wage growth to 3.2% in October.

So, everyone is better off right? Actually not. XpertHR, a consultancy specialising in pay, reported that pay settlements limped towards year end with median settlements at 2%.

 It appears that what has happened both in the UK and the US is that the lower part of the wage distribution – the lowest-paid workers – has just dropped out. 

It’s a batting average effect if you like; the team average rises because batsmen 10 and 11 are not counted any more. We are not exactly sure, but it looks bad news. The issue is whether these jobs – many in pubs, clubs and restaurants – return after the furlough payments stop. But many jobs won’t return, if there are long-run changes in behaviour after the pandemic as expected.

It is unclear after Brexit and the end of the lockdown whether those jobs are coming back.

The puzzle of rising UK wages reveals an unprecedented and tragic truth | Business | The Guardian

 Known as the Nisour Square massacre, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – were part of an armoured convoy that opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns and grenade launchers on a crowd of unarmed people in Iraq. Prosecutors asserted the heavily armed “Raven 23” Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers. The US government said in a memorandum filed after the sentencing: “None of the victims was an insurgent, or posed any threat to the Raven 23 convoy”

The pardons reflected Trump’s willingness to turn a blind eye to American service personnel and contractors committing atrocities against civilians. 

In 2014, Slough, Liberty and Heard were found guilty of 13 charges of voluntary manslaughter and 17 charges of attempted manslaughter, while Slatten, the team’s sniper who was the first to open fire, was convicted of first-degree murder. Slatten was sentenced to life; Slough, Liberty and Heard got 30 years each.

At the sentencing, the US attorney’s office said in a statement: “The sheer amount of unnecessary human loss and suffering attributable to the defendants’ criminal conduct on September 16, 2007, is staggering.”

FBI investigators who visited the scene in the following days described it as the “My Lai massacre of Iraq” – a reference to the infamous slaughter of civilian villagers by US troops during the Vietnam war

Lest we forget, the 14 victims killed by the Blackwater guards on trial were listed as Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y, Mahassin Mohssen Kadhum Al-Khazali, Osama Fadhil Abbas, Ali Mohammed Hafedh Abdul Razzaq, Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Qasim Mohamed Abbas Mahmoud, Sa’adi Ali Abbas Alkarkh, Mushtaq Karim Abd Al-Razzaq, Ghaniyah Hassan Ali, Ibrahim Abid Ayash, Hamoud Sa’eed Abttan, Uday Ismail Ibrahiem, Mahdi Sahib Nasir and Ali Khalil Abdul Hussein.

Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians | Iraq | The Guardian

The fast fashion brand Boohoo is selling clothes made by Pakistani factory workers who say they face appalling conditions and earn as little as 29p an hour.

In the industrial city of Faisalabad, workers at two factories claimed they were paid 10,000 Rupees (£47) a month, well below the legal monthly minimum wage for unskilled labour of 17,500 Rupees, while making clothes to be sold by Boohoo.  In the rush to produce clothes for the western market, workers would sometimes do 24-hour shifts.

“I know we are exploited and paid less than the legal minimum, but we can’t do anything … if I leave the job another person will be ready to replace me.” explained one worker.

Workers in two factories based in the Samanabad area of Faisalabad allege that:

While some are paid the legal minimum wage, others say they earn far less and receive no receipt or payslip to record their income.

At Madina Gloves, which manufactures a range of clothes, workers are often ordered to work unreasonably long shifts without full overtime pay, stretching to 24 hours straight before major deadlines.

Accommodation provided by Madina Gloves is squalid and one worker said they went without running water there for days at a time.

 840,000 private tenants in England and Wales could be behind on their rent, with young people and the self-employed most likely to have missed payments.

The average arrears were between £251 and £500, some tenants reported that they owed their landlord more than £1,000.

Renters aged between 18 and 24 were twice as likely to have fallen behind as the general population of tenants, and the self-employed were most likely to be struggling, with 17% saying they had built up debts to their landlord. These groups have been hard hit by the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis. Young people have suffered disproportionately from job cuts, while many self-employed people have been unable to access government job support schemes and have seen their incomes fall dramatically as a result.

840,000 private tenants in England and Wales could be behind on rent | Money | The Guardian

 The richest state in the richest nation in a wealthy world is drawing up emergency plans in case they have to limit how many people receive life-saving care.

The number of people hospitalized across California with confirmed COVID-19 infections is forecasted to hit 75,000 patients by mid-January.

Rationing care is not in place yet, but they need to be established because “the worst is yet to come,” said Los Angeles County’s health services director, Dr. Christina Ghaly.  Four hospitals run by Los Angeles County are weighing what to do if they cannot treat everyone because of a shortage of beds or staffers. Many hospitals in California already have implemented emergency procedures to stretch staff and space. Corona Regional Medical Center southeast of Los Angeles has converted an old emergency room to handle nearly double te usual number of ICU patients. It’s also using two disaster tents to triage ER patients. Overall, the state’s ICU capacity was just 2.1% on Sunday. Some hospitals have canceled non-essential elective surgeries

A document recently circulated among doctors at the four hospitals proposed that instead of trying to save every life, their goal could shift to saving as many patients as possible — meaning those less likely to survive would not get the same kind of care.

“Some compromise of standard of care is unavoidable; it is not that an entity, system or locale chooses to limit resources, it is that the resources are clearly not available to provide care in a regular manner,” said the document.

California hospitals discuss rationing care as virus surges (apnews.com)