Anger over ING bonuses

Finance minister Jan Kees de Jager is ‘not happy’ about the bonuses which top ING executives are being paid for their performance last year, he told MPs on Thursday.


Earlier it emerged CEP Jan Hommen will get a €1.25m bonus on top of his basic salary of €1.35m.
According to the Telegraaf, he also gets a 2% pay rise, while ordinary counter staff get 1%.
The payout does not break the banking code of conduct which stipulates bonuses should not exceed annual salary.
CFO Patrick Flynn picks up a bonus of €600,000 while CRO Koos Timmermans gets €690,000. Both men earn a salary of €750,000.
The figures are included in the bank’s annual report, published earlier in the day.
Financial crisis
The news broke as MPs and the minister were debating the results of a government report on the causes of the financial crisis.
GroenLinks MP said the bonuses showed ‘moral bankruptcy’. And Labour’s finance spokesman Ronald Plasterk said the decision was ‘idiotic’ and ‘shocking’.
ING justified the bonuses by saying 2010 had been a good year for the bank and financial targets had been met.

Pay rise

Last year Hommen did not get a bonus because the bank had been forced to apply for €10bn in state aid. But he did get a 46% pay increase, the Financieele Dagblad says.
In February, Hommen told a parliamentary committee looking into the causes of the financial crisis that paying bonuses to bank executives will help ING pay back the money it has received in state aid.
ING has paid back €5bn so far, and plans to complete the payback in 2012.

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