London Bankers Charge 'Immoral' Fees, Report Finds - NYTimes.com

London Bankers Charge 'Immoral' Fees, Report Finds - NYTimes.com: "Institutional Investor Council, which represents Britain’s biggest investors, said in a report released on Tuesday that it was “consistently” told by corporate issuers that the fees charged by bankers on rights offerings, or sales of shares, were “too high” in Britain. In the words of one, the fees are “usually immoral.”
To put it in perspective, the council compared underwriting fees paid by a number of companies for rights issues with total compensation for directors in the year of the issue. What it found was stunning. Typically, gross underwriting fees were 10 times as much as the total compensation for executive directors in the year that the rights issue took place, the council said in its report, “Rights Issue Fee Inquiry.”"