With the media busy looking for new bonus-grabbing city types to beat around the head, metaphorically mainly, for continuing to take bonus payments despite their companies or investment portfolios being in freefall, Guy Hands, the boss of Terra Firma, the private equity enterprise which owns EMI, has made a good if expensive PR move by announcing he and his colleagues will waive "performance fees" worth £70 million because the value of the company's assets has slumped.
That slump has been mainly caused by Terra Firma's 2007 purchase of EMI. Despite efforts to cut costs and reinvent the music company, Hands has had to admit that EMI is realistically currently worth half the value it was once pegged at - so 1.3 billion euros instead of 2.6 billion.
That means that even though other Terra Firma owned companies may have increased in value, the total value of the investment fund's assets is down considerably. Because of that fact Terra Firma's top partners will waive the £70 million they would otherwise have been due in bonuses.
It's thought at least half of that amount would have gone to Hands himself, so his decision not to pay out the bonus is a little bit admirable. Though I'm sure he won't starve. You'd think someone who can afford to not take a £35 million bonus could afford a decent haircut wouldn't you?
In the company's annual report, Hands wrote this: "Terra Firma will in March distribute back to investors the carried interest that had previously been earned … and which would have formed the bulk of the reward for Terra Firma's senior team's hard work since 2004. This is absolutely right; our investors have suffered and therefore our rewards should suffer at the same time".