The Financial Services Authority has been banging on about curbing excessive bankers’ pay for ages. What they’ve come up with looks like a cop-out. Are bankers off the hook?

Not really. Granted, the regulator has rowed back a bit from what it was suggesting in early drafts, but what it published on Wednesday still represents a pretty big shift from the way banks have tended to pay their senior people. Obliging banks to defer two-thirds of bonus payouts by at least three years and outlawing multi-year bonuses is a pretty big deal.