Jake's ViewPay handed out to SFC staff is way out of line with its deficit
The Securities and Futures Commission has incurred a HK$355.6 million loss while at the same time its 867 staff members were paid an average of HK$1.39 million. It is long past time that some restraints were imposed on these people
With all its new rules requiring listed companies to tell the market quickly of any significant news affecting them, you would think that what is sauce for the corporate gander is sauce for the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) goose.
Not so.
In blowing its own trumpet for its just released annual report, the SFC tells you that to “cut across all our regulatory functions, we have adopted ... organisational changes and cross-divisional teams to deploy our existing resources and expertise more effectively.”
You are also told that the SFC has conducted 312 risk-based on-site inspections of intermediaries and made 8,960 requests for trading and account records from intermediaries.
But you are left to your own devices to discover that it incurred a loss of HK$355.6 million in the year to March 31, pretty well on HK$1 million a day, and that this loss would have been HK$132.5 million greater but for a “revaluation of equity funds”. It was in profit the year before.
Why such a thumping big deficit?