Top European banking chief executives are still raking in the cash despite the industry's dismal performance in recent years.

Top European banking chief executives are still raking in the cash despite the industry's dismal performance in recent years.

And UK banking chiefs have performed particularly well compared to their European counterparts.

In a ranking table of last year's 15 best-paid European bank bosses - compiled by research firm SNL Financial - four UK banks finished inside the top ten.

HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group chief executives secured second and third places in the ranking, while  Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered also made the top tier. (Both Lloyds and RBS were bailed out by the UK taxpayer after the financial market crash of 2008.)

HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver took home €9.5 million ($11.8 million), while Antonio Horta-Osario at Lloyds was not far behind with €8.8 million. HSBC did, it should be noted, record an increase in profits in 2013 but has still paid out nearly £5 billion in fines between 2009-2013 for various misdemeanors. Meanwhile, Lloyds reported profits of £415 million for 2013 against losses of £606 million the year before – marking its first bottom-line profit since 2010.    

Stephen Hester, the former RBS boss, took seventh place with a total pay package of €6 million. Under pressure Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands came in at ninth place with €5.3 million. And finally current Royal Bank of Scotland chief exec Ross McEwan took home €3.4 million last year - putting him in 12th place.

The runaway winner though was Anshu Jain, chief executive of Germany-based Deutsche Bank, who made a whopping €10 million last year, while his co-chief executive - Jurgen Fitschen - came in at sixth place with €7.3 million.

Three French-based banks also made it into the ranking: Credit Suisse's Brady Dougan took home €8 million, while BNP Paribas' Jean-Laurent Bonnafe and Societe Generale's Frederic Oudea took home €3.4 million and €2.7 million respectively. 

Perhaps most interestingly Sweden's Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB's finished bottom of the table with chief executive Annika Falkengren receiving €2.3 million in 2013. This was despite earning her shareholders a return on average equity of 13.22 per cent - far ahead of her peers.

Danske Bank analyst Matti Ahokas told SNL that Falkengren's pay is the consequence of a particular social and political environment in the Nordic region.

"Bonus is a very dirty word in Sweden; transparency about executive pay in Sweden is high and … there is a disproportionate level of focus [on it]," Ahokas said.

"Swedish banks are unbelievably heavily scrutinized companies and in the context of the global industry are amazingly efficient and amazingly well run. … It's not been the case that Swedish executive pay has come down over the course of the last seven years. It was never raised to the same levels as elsewhere."

SNL adds that the current situation is unsustainable and says unless banks start delivering double digit growth then bank chief executives cannot justify their pay in the future.

"Ultimately, the economics will bite here," said Tom Gosling, a partner and leader at PwC's UK reward practice. "Most banks have earned mid-single-digit returns since 2009 and at some point that has got to change. There are no immediate prospects of market conditions changing sufficiently for revenues to pick up to bridge that gap."

"It's really difficult to be precise about it, but the reality is that for returns to get back to where they need to be — investors are really looking for double-digit returns — either productivity has to go up by a third or pay has to fall by a quarter, roughly. The reality is that it is probably going to be a bit of both," he added.