The news that top Bank of Bermuda executives will get an average of $2 million each in cash and shares if they effect job cuts of 150 staff over the next 14 months has thrown the Bank of Bermuda takeover into a new and unappealing light.

The news has been greeted with shock not only within the bank but in the general community as well.

First, it is necessary to put the arrangement, revealed on Monday in the proxy statement issued to bank shareholders, into perspective.

It is no surprise that the bank will see redundancies. That was made public when the takeover was first announced more than a month ago. And it is likely that the bank can become leaner and meaner and still provide the same range of services.

Nor is it unusual for bank executives to get financial rewards when they effect savings. It is part of the incentive for doing so, in the same way that increasing the bank's revenues and thus contributing to profits should be rewarded.

But it is outside of Bermuda's experience for the aim of the incentives to be put quite so brutally (cut jobs and we will make you rich) and it is disappointing that the bank's top managers would accept such a deal.

The bank says it hopes to make the job reductions through attrition, meaning that when a staff member resigns or retires, he or she will not be replaced by another person.

But if that's not the case, then redundancies will have to be made so that the bank executives can secure their million dollar bonuses.

If that happens, every career that is brought to a premature end will in fact mean, as the Bermuda Sun pointed out, another $17,000 in the pockets of the bank's executives.

That is the only way that this can be seen by employees. And it isn't even worth hazarding a guess at the damage that will do to the morale of the employees as they find out if they are disposable or if they are among the favoured few "key employees" who must be kept so that the bank's current top management can receive their reward.

Of course, this may be what HSBC, "the world's local bank", wants to engender. Some companies like to have their staff operate in an atmosphere of mutual distrust and internal competition because it makes them more competitive and hungrier to impress the executive floor.

In the short term, it might even work. In the long term, it is likely to be a disaster.

Of course, it may be that bank employees, having seen HSBC take the velvet gloves off, will vote with their feet anyway.

That may put the executives in the unfortunate situation of begging some "key employees" to stay at the same time that they may be pushing others out of the door.

Whether the pain of that is worth $2 million is unlikely.

If this is "how the real world works", then perhaps the bank, and Bermuda, should keep operating the Bermuda way, which seems positively civilised by comparison.

It has been suggested that the future millionaires at the bank (they stand to make more from the options they also hold) should give their bonuses to charity, or even to some of the people who may lose their jobs. It's not a bad idea.