Bonuses restored to forgiven Julius Bär managers
Swiss bank Julius Bär bumped up executive bonuses in 2024 following a year of austerity caused by the Signa property debacle.
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Bonuses increased again in the 2024 financial year, as did the total compensation of top managers and the board of directors.
The entire Executive Board, which consists of 16 people, received compensation totalling CHF49.2 million, according to the asset manager’s annual report published on Monday.
Payments to Julius Bär managers have thus returned to their former level. In the previous year, the old entire management team, which still consisted of ten people, received only CHF13 million. Before the Signa debacle, the ten-member Executive Board had received a total of CHF35.5 million in 2022.
Interim CEO highest paid
The reason for the “dent” in 2023 was the complete write-off of CHF606 million for a loan to the Austrian bankrupt René Benko. As a result, the bonuses paid to CEO Philipp Rickenbacher, who has since resigned, and five other members of the executive board were cancelled.
Excluding the extra payment to Frauenlob, Nic Dreckmann remained the highest-earning Baer manager. The latter had headed Julius Bär as interim CEO until two months ago following Rickenbacher’s resignation. Dreckmann received total compensation of CHF5.8 million in 2024, compared to CHF2 million the previous year.
By way of comparison: in the last “normal” financial year, former CEO Rickenbach earned CHF6 million in 2022.
Chair back in the money
The soon-to-depart chair of the board of directors Romeo Lacher, who has been publicly blamed for the Signa debacle, also earned significantly more again in 2024. Lacher’s salary totalled CHF900,000 after CHF650,000 in the previous year. However, he did not come close to the “pre-Signa figure” of CHF1.09 million.
The bank had announced at the time that Lacher and other members of the board would waive their share-based remuneration in the wake of the Signa crisis. In total, remuneration for members of the board of directors last year totalled CHF3.3 million, compared to CHF3 million in the previous year.
The write-off of the Signa loan had caused Julius Bär’s annual profit to fall by half to CHF454 million in 2023. In 2024, it rose again to CHF1.02 billion.
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Translated from German with DeepL/mga
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