Philipp Rickenbacher, former CEO of the Zurich banking institution Julius Baer who stepped down in February, must suffer a substantial loss of salary due to the loan debacle surrounding real estate group Signa. Even chairman Romeo Lacher will have to tighten his belt.
Philipp Rickenbacher, former CEO of Julius Baer, is really feeling the loan debacle surrounding the collapsed Signa empire of Austrian entrepreneur René Benko, which he is partially responsible for, when it comes to his remuneration.
In the year gone by, he received «total compensation» of 1.72 million francs ($1.94 million). This is considerably less than a year ago, when the bank paid him 6.03 million francs.
Targets Not Met
His salary for 2023 is based solely on the fixed component of 1.5 million francs and allocations to pension and social security. He did not receive any performance-linked compensation, as revealed in the annual report published on Monday. This is because he did not meet the corresponding targets.
The reason behind this is the 600 million francs that Julius Baer had to write off owing to the loan exposure mentioned earlier during the last financial year, and which ultimately led to Rickenbacher’s dismissal.
Complete Group Management Earning Less
Rickenbacher was replaced on an interim basis by Nic Dreckmann, who earned the highest salary in 2023. In total, he earned 1.97 million francs (fixed: 750,000 francs, share-based: 1.02 million francs, and allocations to pension and social security: 224,000 francs).
Julius Baer’s entire (operative) executive board of ten were paid 13.02 million francs in total, after 35.48 million francs in the year before – at that time, there were also ten people on the board. In total, the members of the executive board took loans amounting to 25.06 million francs, compared to 23.68 million francs in the previous year. The highest amount was granted to chief investment officer Yves Bonzon amounting to 8.24 million francs (previous year: 8.17 million francs).
Chairman Also Loses Out
Chairman of the board, Romeo Lacher, was also hit by the effects of the Signa debacle. Last year, he received total compensation of 654,000 francs, after receiving 1.09 million francs the year before.
While his fixed compensation remained unchanged at 400,000 francs, the share-based component was reduced to 150,000 francs, compared to 600,000 francs from the previous year. The pension allocations increased slightly to 104,000 francs after 89,000 in the previous year.
The other members of the board received compensation between 220,000 and 300,000 francs over a full year, as can also be found in the report. The members of the supervisory committee did not make use of any loans.
