Whenever he speaks about City bankers, the archbishop of Canterbury would appear to have Isaiah in mind. The prophet said, “Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough.”
As the head of the Church of England, Rowan Williams (who presided over the lavish wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton) has been an unrelenting and outspoken critic of “excessive bonuses” and the so-called prosperity gospel that purports to justify them. Now he is putting the church’s money where his mouth is. The Bank of England has notified companies in which it invests its nearly $9 billion portfolio that it will no longer countenance senior executives’ being paid bonuses that are more than four times larger than their salaries.
The newly activist church emphasizes, however, that it approves of competitive salaries and bonuses that “genuinely” reward success and align with the interests of society as well as shareholders. (The church earned 15.2 percent on its money in 2010.)
