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The executive president of UBS, Sergio Emotti, was paid SFR14.9MN ($ 16.8mn) last year, retaining his status as a better paid bank manager in Europe, as well as remuneration in the financial services sector faces a growing scrutiny in Switzerland.
Emotti compensation was slightly larger than the SFR14.4mn that was granted in 2023which was for nine months of work, but extended for a full year.
The dissemination of Ermotti’s annual payment in the UBS annual report occurs when Switzerland’s top house Executive remuneration In the banking sector to SFR5MN.
The proposal emphasizes how the politically sensitive payment in the financial sector has become the controversial acquisition of UBS of the former Credit Suisse rival in 2023. The motion still needs to move through the lower house and the country’s executive branch.
Ermotti returned to run UBS For the second time in 2023 after the Swiss Bank bought Credit Suisse in an agreement orchestrated by the Swiss regulators.
His payment for 2024 exceeds the £ 5.4mn received by the executive director of HSBC, Georges Elheder, and the head of Deutsche Bank of € 9.75 million euros, Christian Sewing. It is also more than the executive president of € 13.8mn Banco Santander, Ana Botín and the 13.2 million euros delivered to the Chief of Unicredit, Andrea Orcel.
Ermotti’s remuneration, however, is less than the amounts that executives earn in the US companions on Wall Street. JPMorgan Chase increased The executive president of a long time, Jamie Dimon, pays 8 percent to $ 39mn last year, his greatest remuneration in the United States Bank. Morgan Stanley this year said it Paid ted pick $ 34mn for his first year as executive director.
It is also less than that in some Swiss companies. The executive director of the Novartis Pharmaceutical Company, VASANT NARASIMHAN, received a total of SFR19.2MN last year, for example.
Many in the industry expected Ermotti’s compensation to be much higher this year. The total Ermotti package was limited to SFR15MN in 2023, but the bank said last year that the limit would reach SFR20MN by 2024.
Swiss banks are not subject to the same restrictions on executive remuneration as those of the Eurozone regulated by the European Central Bank.
The greatest scrutiny about the executive salary in the country also occurs when UBS is stopped for a potentially substantial increase in capital requirements, since Switzerland reforms its regulations too big-big-to-fail following the disappearance of Credit Suisse.
The Swiss government is considering a variety of measures aimed at making the banking sector safer.
However, the reforms discussed have created tensions between UBS and the Swiss political establishment.
In a letter to the shareholders, published in the annual UBS report on Monday, Emotti and President Colm Kelle criticized the “poorly informed public debate” in Switzerland, saying that the planned reforms had “created uncertainties when entering 2025”.
“Excessive capital requirements or other undue limitations in our international business would penalize our diversified global presence, they would go to the government’s financial sector strategy and damage the competitiveness of Switzerland’s economy, increase the cost of capital for owners and companies,” they said.
The pair added that they remained committed to a “constructive dialogue” and that “they would continue to contribute our facts and arguments so that a reasonable solution can be found.”