Eric Daniels of Lloyds, John Varley of Barclays and Micheal Geoghegan of HSBC are leaving the top slots of chief executive next year. Respectively, they are going to receive bonuses of £2.3m, £3m and £5.6m.

Anglo Irish Bank – the bank that contributed more than any other to Ireland’s demise – increased pay by 5% to staff in 2009 and has paid bonuses to 15 employees since January last year.

Stephen Hester, chief executive of The Royal Bank of Scotland, is going to receive a possible bonus of £2.4m and his colleagues’ Peter Sands of Standard Chartered could go up to £3.2m

While Irish citizens will bear the burden of the big austerity package required for the EU and IMF-led bailout, three of the country’s bust banks (AIB, Bank of Ireland and Anglo Irish Bank) have between them awarded themselves over €70m bonuses and pay increases since last year.

Despite the crisis and the proposals to limit excesses through new rules and taxation, the majority of bankers in Europe and internationally expect their 2010 bonuses to be higher than their 2009 ones. “Business as usual”.

The British Bankers Association (BBA), facing public anger on scandalous bonuses, has stated that “Outside the UK, the concern on bonuses is limited or doesn’t exist at all”, and argued that any set of international rules on the subject should not penalize British Banks. Regrettably for them, workers across Europe are monitoring what is happening all around Europe on shameful bonuses in crisis and austerity times, and any attempt to minimize or get around the problem will not divert people’s attention.

British Banks assume that the City accounts for about 2.4% of the national economy and losing London’s position among the world’s pre-eminent financial capitals would come at an enormous cost. Banks are clearly saying that tighter caps on bonuses and higher taxes imposed by the government would potentially divert new investment elsewhere in the world. The real problem is that bankers’ pay, even capped or taxed, far exceeds the incomes of millions of people that are struggling on a daily base against unemployment, mortgage payments and cuts in public services.

According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) bonuses for bankers in London, Europe’s N°1 financial centre, are expected to rise every year in the period 2010-2014.

HSBC, the global financial services company, has found its own way to comply with new EU-wide regulations likely to be finalized before the end of the year. To get around tightening rules on bonus payout, HSBC plans to double bankers basic pay and proportionally reduce bonuses. Clever but unfair.

The average FTSE 100 chief executive took home £4.9m in total earnings in the year to June. That is at least 200 times the average pay of full-time workers.