Bankers Plan Pay Guidlines to Avoid Backlash - FT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investment bankers are proposing new guidelines on pay and bonuses in the financial sector to head off a political backlash against excessive rewards, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

The paper said top bankers will discuss the idea at a meeting at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) conference in Rio de Janeiro to discourage banks from giving incentives to traders to take excessively risky bets while failing to censure them if things turn sour.

The paper cited Josef Ackermann, head of Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), who chairs the IIF and Charles Dallara, head of the IIF, saying compensation is on the agenda.

Since IIF, the top international bank lobby, acknowledged responsibility at a meeting in October for the subprime crisis and its members promised to reform, things have got worse for the industry.

Banks, brokerages and insurers have written down more than $150 billion in bad assets -- many of them linked to the cratering U.S. subprime mortgage market -- and the latest estimate by UBS analysts put the total price tag for the crisis at $600 billion, with banks and brokerages responsible for more than half of that.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke, editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)