Playing deivils advocate here.The bonus is in share options which he cant excircise for a couple of years.They might just be wrthless by then,unless he does a good enough job to make them worth having.The bonus is approx. half the amount he was paid (in share options) he had last year.Iirc he didnt have any bonus at all the year before.
He left a much higher paid job to take on the challenge of trying to rebuild RBS from the chaos which Fred Goodwin and his team left behind.
Goodwin was paid many millions more while he was wrecking RBS,and got a knighthood from Labour for his trouble.
The contract/terms and conditions of Hestons contract were drawn up by Labour before they left office.One of the terms was that the directors could at their discretion pay him a bonus,the amount of which would be at their discretion.
It was reported on radio 4 this morning that the board had planned on paying him £1.5 million but the Govt. argued very strongly against that and eventually they settled on the current figure. The govt. argued for less or none at all,but at that point the board threatened to resign en masse.This would almost certainly have brought about the collapse of RBS and the tapxpayers would have lost all their money.
There seems to be general agreement that he is doing a pretty decent job in the worst possible circumstances,and for someone in his position he is being paid a modest amount in comparison with his contemporaries.