EXCITING NEWS: RBS will be hiring next year and is allegedly paying some enormous salaries

Forget the downgrade, forget the new concerns about France, forget the redundancies, forget the specific possibility of many thousands of redundancies at RBS and the trimming of 200 people from RBS's corporate and advisory business in June, RBS will soon be hiring.

According to The Telegraph, which has been speaking to headhunters, the bank is putting about mandates for recruiting next year in its:

...debt underwriting, corporate broking and mergers and acquisitions advisory, as well as...[its] trading business.

Even more excitingly, The Telegraph reports that RBS is paying salaries of up to 999,999 in order to attract people. Salaries in excess of 1m are apparently being avoided because RBS is obliged to publish how many of its people earn seven figures in base pay and doesn't want to divulge its generosity.

Is this really true?

RBS declined to comment. However, headhunters told us the bit about the hiring is true but the bit about the salaries definitely is not.

"They're talking about the rebuild and upgrade of corporate and investment banking and are dropping underperformers in preparation for upgrading next year," claims the head of one financial services search boutique.

"They are definitely not paying salaries of 999k," says another. "They've recently increased salaries for their top 15 or 16 people to 400k, but that's very senior staff only and RBS were behind the rest of the market in paying this."

The average MD at RBS is apparently on something more like 220-250k. At a more junior level, pay isn't that great: "Associates at RBS get salaries of 65k-95k," says the M&A-focused head of another search firm. "Bonuses there are up to 100%, but are much more likely to be 60-80%."