UNICREDIT is poised to increase its overall bonus pool for last year by about 16 per cent, after the Italian lender posted a record profit and increased shareholder returns.
The average gain per person will be higher given last year’s job reductions, with increases of between 9 per cent and 27 per cent depending on countries, businesses activity and relative performance, according to people familiar with the matter.
Lower-ranking employees can expect bigger gains than material risk takers and top executives as part of the bank’s commitment to rewarding its front line staff, the people said, asking not to be named discussing private information.
A spokesman for UniCredit declined to comment.
Chief executive officer Andrea Orcel is seeking to reward employees and retain talent after a year that saw shares of the Italian lender almost double. The CEO, in the role for three years, has scaled back bureaucracy, closed weak business lines and shifted resources to more profitable areas. The bank this month announced it’s boosting shareholder returns on 2023 profit to 8.6 billion euros (S$12.4 billion), once again raising the payout benchmark for European banks.
The Milan-based bank’s variable compensation pool covers less than 900 top managers with risk responsibilities, as well as non-executive employees working at branches and offices. Last year, the total remuneration of non-executive employees rose between 7 per cent and 13 per cent, about twice as much as that of the risk takers, they said.
The bank doesn’t disclose the size of the overall bonus pool, though it publishes the pool for top executives and risk takers such as traders and dealmakers.
Investment banks from Deutsche Bank and UBS Group to Societe Generale are planning to reduce the overall amount of variable compensation they will pay out for 2023 after a challenging year for their securities units, Bloomberg reported last month. BLOOMBERG
