Credit Suisse slashes top executives’ bonuses 64% for torrid 2021

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss bank Credit Suisse is seen at a branch office in Zurich, Switzerland, November 3, 2021. REUTERS/Arnd WIegmann

ZURICH (Reuters) -Credit Suisse executives took home less pay in 2021, its annual report showed on Thursday, as top managers saw bonuses slashed by nearly two-thirds over a series of scandals and a 1.65 billion Swiss franc ($1.78 billion) annual loss.

Bonuses for its executive managers fell 64% to 8.6 million francs as the bank cancelled long-term incentives, while Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein saw awarded compensation fall 43% to 3.8 million Swiss francs in his first full year in the role.

“The Compensation Committee considered that it was important to emphasize leadership accountability. As a result, Executive Board members had one full year of variable compensation cancelled,” Compensation Committee Chair Kai S. Nargolwala said in a letter. “This equated to lost compensation for the Executive Board of more than 40 million Swiss francs.”

Credit Suisse (SIX:CSGN)’s 2021 was marked by the collapse of $10 billion in supply chain finance funds linked to insolvent British finance firm Greensill and a $5.5 billion trading loss from the implosion of the Archegos investment fund.

Its executive board was awarded 38.6 million Swiss francs, less than the 52.7 million francs it was granted in 2020.

Executives’ pay had already been slashed in 2020, as the bank faced a string of bad headlines, spanning a spying scandal to a $450 million write-down on a hedge fund investment.

It was then cut further due to the fallout of the Archegos and Greensill scandals, which occurred last March ahead of Credit Suisse’s annual general meeting.

Gottstein, previously the head of Credit Suisse’s Swiss business, became CEO in February 2020 after the abrupt departure of his predecessor over the spying scandal.

His pay was already revised downward to 6.5 million francs in 2020, from the 8.53 million Swiss francs the bank had proposed ahead of the Archegos and Greensill scandals.

($1 = 0.9271 Swiss francs)