Taoiseach wants pay of bank chiefs cut by 25%
Salaries should then be capped at that level, he said.
If implemented it would see the successor to Brian Goggin, who retires as chief executive of Bank of Ireland in the summer, start on a basic salary of around €866,000 ($1m), double the $500,000 a year salary cap that US president Barack Obama wants to impose on executives in the United States.
Mr Goggin earned a basic salary of €1.1m last year, which on top of bonuses and pension contributions pushed his total pay to nearly €3m. In the previous year he earned a total of €4m.
The Taoiseach added that fees for non executive directors should also be cut by a quarter. “If there were to be recapitalisation I’d expect the directors’ fees to be cut by at least 25%,” he said.
Senator Dan Boyle, chairman of the Green Party, also called for cuts in the pay of top bankers to much closer to those being demanded by the US president.
Ireland should follow the Obama lead and peg the pay of senior banking executives at double the Taoiseach’s salary which is currently worth about €280,000, he said. That would put them on a salary of about €560,000, much closer to the Obama figure.
That level of remuneration contrasts sharply with the €3.2m paid out to former boss of Anglo David Drumm in 2007.
Last night a spokeswoman for Anglo, which is now state owned, said the bank will take into account the guidelines laid down in the Dáil by Mr Cowen when it comes to setting a salary for the incoming chief executive. “Remuneration will be determined by the new board of the company taking into consideration the view of their shareholder,” she said in a written statement.
CIROC — the Covered Institutions Remuneration Oversight Committee — set up by the Minister for Finance to is currently looking into all remuneration plans of senior executives of banks guaranteed by the state. It is due to report back to the Government on March 5.
