Julius Baer has slashed the bonuses of top staff, after mammoth losses from its exposure to collapsed property group Signa.
The Swiss bank said that now-departed chief executive Philipp Rickenbacker was paid CHF 1.7m (£1.5m) in the 2023 performance year, down from CHF 6m in 2022.
The 10 members of the executive board were paid a total of CHF 13m this year, down from CHF 35.5m in 2022.
Julius Baer has taken a CHF 586m hit from loans to the now-collapsed Austrian property developer Signa, causing its latest full-year profits to almost halve to CHF 472m.
The firm announced on 1 February that Rickenbacker would be stepping down, and that David Nicol, chair of the governance and risk committee of the board of directors, will not stand for re-election at the 2024 annual shareholder meeting.
Read more: Signa collapse set to impact European commercial property sector
It is now exiting from its private debt business entirely and is winding down its remaining private debt book of CHF 0.8bn.
“Given the financial impact and reputational damage incurred as a result of the private debt related loss allowance in 2023, the Nomination & Compensation Committee and the Board of Directors determined that the chief executive was not entitled to a bonus for the 2023 performance year,” Julius Baer said in its annual report.
“Mr. Rickenbacher has stepped down from his position effective 1 February 2024. We thank him for his considerable contribution over the past five years and for the measures he has taken to navigate Julius Baer through a challenging time, charting a successful course that is tangible in many of the transformational steps that have brought us to where we are today.”
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