Row over ABN Amro pay and ethics continues; did minister approve pay rise?

The fall-out from last week’s ABN Amro pay rise row continued on Tuesday after broadcaster Nos said a majority of MPs think the bank’s IPO should be delayed for some time.

‘No one will want to invest in ABN Amro without having the lowdown on all the problems,’ Christian Democrat MP Pieter Omzigt said. Only once finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem has come clean will an IPO be an option, he said.

According to the NRC, finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem actually approved the controversial pay rise for the board in March 2014. Last week, Dijsselbloem was at the forefront of criticism of six ABN Amro board members for accepting a €100,000 pay rise.

Dijsselbloem also said he was delaying the IPO to allow calm to return. Two days later, the board said its members had decided not to accept rise because of the angry reactions.

Approval

The NRC quotes a letter in which ABN Amro chief executive Gerrit Zalm summarises a discussion between himself and Dijsselbloem, in which the minister pledges to defend the pay rise. The board members have had a right to the rise since 2012 but passed for the first two years.

Integrity

The Financieele Dagblad reports on Tuesday that the central bank has expressed concerns about a lack of awareness in the boardroom about the other jobs done by its supervisory board members and about their private interests.

In addition, the bank has not yet implemented new rules aimed at eradicating any potential conflict of interest involving senior bankers and managers, the paper says.

The information comes from a confidential letter sent by the central bank to Zalm. In the letter, the bank says ABN Amro’s anti-corruption strategy is ‘insufficient’.

ABN Amro said on Tuesday the letter is based on outdated information.