Sir Win Bischoff, the chairman of Citigroup, said yesterday that bankers could not be completely blamed for last year's collapse of the financial system on both sides of the Atlantic.

Speaking in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, of which he was the New Year's Day guest editor, Sir Win said: “My view is that they [bankers] are partly to blame. There are people who feel remorse about this - there's no doubt about it. Do they all? I don't know.”

Offering only limited statements of regret, Sir Win did not say whether he felt it was worth personally apologising for the crisis, which helped to trigger recessions across both the American and British economies.

In November, Citigroup, which was once the world's biggest bank, received a bailout from Washington that carries a potential cost to the American taxpayer of $326 billion (£223 billion).

Sir Win explained: “It is very important for banks not to deny that they carry some of the can, whether that's 50 cents on the dollar that is their responsibility or 60 or 40.”

He said that Citigroup would continue to pay some bonuses to its staff for this year's work, although he stressed that the bank would have to discuss its pay policy with the US Treasury as a condition for receiving taxpayer-backed funds.

He added that he believed that pay for bankers would fall: “It's going to come back much more into the mainstream in terms of remuneration.” But, when it came to the way that salary packages were structured, he cautioned against imposing too stringent restrictions on banks that have received federal help.

“That's going down a road which I think is really quite dangerous,” Sir Win said. “You should not be saying to yourself that a rock star should be paid this and a banker should be paid that. But if you do take money from the Government, from the taxpayer, there is a natural interest, just as there is by shareholders.”

Separately, Citigroup said in a statement on New Year's Eve that both Sir Win and Vikram Pandit, the bank's chief executive, would forgo their bonuses for 2008 and that the amount paid to other senior executives would be cut.

However, the Citigroup chairman sought to defend the £38 million payout to Chuck Prince, the former head of the bank, who resigned in November 2007. “Just on a technicality, a lot of that £38 million actually was deferred pension.”

Sir Win was asked whether Citigroup planned to demand that Mr Prince hands back some cash, in the light of similar demands made by UBS, the Swiss bank, in respect of Peter Wuffli, its own former chief executive.

He said: “I'm not going to get into that. I think it's much more difficult in the Anglo-Saxon system. I think the Swiss may have an advantage there.”

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