Jan Hommen, the Chief Executive Officer of the Dutch ING Bank has refused an annual 1.24 million EUR bonus at the end of 2010 and took only a 1.35 million EUR salary for his job. BBC News informs about it on March 22.
Hommen said that this bonus could cause a negative reaction in society and influence the Bank’s reputation. The top-manager has appealed other employees of the Dutch Bank to refuse bonuses too, though, he noted that the decision about their payment was made according to the whole financial organization’s work annual results. The Financial Times notes that three top-managers of the Bank will refuse bonuses of the total amount of 2.5 million EUR.
Earlier public organizations, officials, and ING clients expressed dissatisfaction with high payments to the top-managers of the Bank which had to borrow 10 billion EUR from the government during the crisis. The Bank average executives, however, note that their salaries had not been changed for two years in a row.
According to the results of 2010 the net profit of the Dutch Bank was 3.22 billion EUR. If to compare with 2009, at that time the loss of the financial organization was 935 million EUR.
Public organizations in different European counties express displeasure because of high bonuses got by banks’ top-managers. Bankers, however, note that they can not refuse to pay these payments; otherwise top-managers will be gained over by other financial organizations. In January 2011 Robert Diamond, the head of the British Barclays banks proposed refusing the disputes about salaries and “go further”.
