RBS’s Fred Goodwin gets shredded

The Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin - so called for his aggressive cost-cutting skills - is the most high-profile of the bankers who lost their jobs today as RBS, Lloyds and HBOS were all part-nationalised in Gordon Brown's £37bn rescue mission. But he wasn't the only one. Goodwin's chairman Tom McKillop has also been pushed out, as have the top pair at HBOS - chief executive Andy Hornby and chairman Lord Dennis.

When RBS took over NatWest in 2000, the merger under Goodwin's aegis cost 18,000 jobs. He went on to be voted European Banker of the Year in 2003, because "Under his leadership, RBS has never strayed from the path of a solid business policy". Two years later he was knighted.

By 2006, Goodwin (pictured), married with two young sons, was on a basic salary of about £3.5m with potential bonuses of up to £8m. Goodwin and other top brass at RBS could travel around Europe in a £20m Dassault Falcon 900 private jet, kept in Paris but chartered in Edinburgh where the bank is based. Now 50, he is rumoured to be receiving a redundancy cheque of £2m and he will remain chairman of the Princes Trust.

Tom McKillop, 65, made his money in pharmaceuticals before becoming a director of Lloyds TSB and then chairman of RBS. Among a host of other top positions he is president of the Science Council.

Andy Hornby, 41, is a graduate of both Oxford University and Harvard Business School. He held senior positions with Asda and Halifax before taking the top job with HBOS in 2006, five years after Halifax and Bank of Scotland merged. Described as the "boy wonder of banking" he is the man credited with introducing Howard the singing banker to the nation's television screens.

"I always say to people, 'We make loads of mistakes but we try things first'," said Hornby in 2005. "I'd much rather we carried on being the first and get something wrong than be the other way round." The banker also insists on calling staff in each branch of Halifax 'colleagues'. He is without a job today - but is said to be worth more than £10m.

His chairman Lord Dennis - full title Baron Henry Dennistoun Stevenson of Coddenham - has homes in Edinburgh, London and Suffolk he can retire to. "It is a nasty truth in life," he said last October, "that a nasty bastard with no humanity can be successful in business, but not for any length of time."