Daily Lesson from Life 23 March 2009

To day is my eldest daughter's 21st birthday. I want to thank my wife and wish my daughter happy birthday!


"ING executive urges employees to give up bonuses It issued a "moral appeal" to senior employees to give up their 2008 bonuses after the firm received state aid. -Mon, Mar 23, 2009 AFP

THE HAGUE (AFP) - The head of the supervisory board at Dutch banking and insurance giant ING on Monday issued a "moral appeal" to senior employees to give up their 2008 bonuses after the firm received state aid.


"This is a moral appeal," Jan Hommen told the newspaper De Volkskrant. "We are asking 1,200 of our highest-level employees to do without their bonuses for 2008." ING's estimated 40,000 employees received bonuses last year worth about 300 million euros (S$620 million), Hommen said.

While it would be impossible to cancel all of them, group managers are prepared to give them up, he added. He said ING would distribute no bonuses to workers this year, adding that "a new salary policy," which would offer bonuses "if ING's overall results are positive" would be drafted early in 2010.

Controversy erupted in the Netherlands after ING said it would offer its future finance director, Patrick Flynn, a package of 100,000 shares, with a potential value of 1.3 million euros.


Finance Minister Wouter Bos reacted angrily to the news, noting that ING had been the beneficiary of a 10-billion-euro capital injection from the government in November.

Bos is to consider blocking 2008 bonuses at financial institutions that received state aid if they surpass terms worked out in negotiations between companies and unions, a finance ministry spokesman said Monday.


ING shareholders on April 27 are to vote on the nomination of Flynn as finance director and Hommen as chairman of the board of directors."

This strange phenomenon of companies receiving state aid or taxpayers' money in order to state afloat and relevant paying their 'staffs' bonuses is not privy to the US folks it seems! This practice, however, is rather heard in the Asian countries thus far. Maybe it has to do with the individualism of the Western culture vs. the Eastern culture. In fact, in Japan, quite a lot of the senior folks voluntarily cut their own pay let alone asking for bonuses!!

Lessons for me are:

1. if you developed an entitlement mentality, it is hard to wane of it!;

2. leaders are different from others as they are supposedly have higher morality and are expected to do the right things right in extraordinary circumstances. Surely a company that were kept afloat by government aid qualified to be in 'extraordinary' situation! Why the inaction?;

3. it is obvious that some have given up the fight to turn back this practice while some will, no doubt, continue to fight against allowing such 'morally corrupt' action to continue. When we are asking people to do the right things, we sometimes need to push them - hard! Not everyone wants to take the bitter medicine!

When this is all over, I wonder how long will it take for people to forget that some among us did not do the right things when given an opportunity. Will they live to regret it? Will they be singled out for further criticism? Will they be 'shamed' to not repeat it again? Only time will tell as people with entitlement mentality will fight it unnatural to see our points of view why they should forgo the 'legally binding' bonuses!