Reports
Credit Suisse's Board Freezes Its Total Compensation
Switzerland's second-biggest bank is proposing to cut variable compensation to the board and freeze board compensation in total.
Credit Suisse's board of directors has proposed to freeze total compensation it pays itself, while total variable payments made up of long-term incentive awards for this year, and short-term incentive awards for 2016, should be slashed by 40 per cent, it said.
The decision to freeze and cut certain payments came after the
Zurich-listed bank published its compensation report in late
March. The chairman of the board of directors, Urs Rohner, and
member of the board and chairman of the compensation committee,
Jean Lanier, consulted with shareholders, and some of them
"expressed reservations" about variable compensation, the bank
said in a statement yesterday.
It is proposed that "the total variable compensation comprising
of Long-Term Incentive awards for 2017 and Short-Term Incentive
awards for 2016, as previously granted to them by the Board, be
reduced by 40 per cent each". "In addition, the board of
directors has also decided to maintain total board compensation
at the level of 2015 and 2016, with no incremental increase in
2017 as proposed to the AGM," the bank said.
In late March, Credit Suisse had to increase its loss from what previously had been reported for the fourth quarter of last year and the whole of last year because of a SFr272 million ($274 million) rise in a charge stemming from a legal settlement around sales of residential mortgage-backed securities. The adjustment increased 2016 net loss attributable to shareholders to SFr2.619 billion in Q4 2016 and SFr2.710 billion in 2016 compared to a net loss of SFr5.828 billion in Q4 2015 and SFr2.944 billion in 2015.
In early April, it was reported that Credit Suisse had come under fire from tax authorities as the firm's offices in London, Paris and Amsterdam were visited by local authorities concerning “client tax matters”. The bank has issued a statement and taken out advertisements in newspapers to defend its actions and explain what is happening.
