Zurich-based Credit Suisse just barely won approval for pay practices including a 3.09 billion Swiss franc bonus pot. Chairman Urs Rohner received a scathing review from shareholders at the Swiss bank's annual general meeting.
The event is the culmination of weeks of controversy over an overall 3.09 billion Swiss franc bonus pool for top executives and board members. Major shareholder groups including Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis effectively forced Rohner and Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam to back down from those plans.
An apology from Rohner for being insensitive to shareholder views did little to quell anger among the 1,540 present in Zurich; investors began grilling the chairman after a brief disruption by activists.
Credit Suisse managed just shy of 58 percent approval from shareholders for the overall pay plan, with more than 40 percent opposing it. The result is a scathing indictment of Rohner's failure to properly gauge shareholder sentiment, and he promised to intensify talks with shareholders this year.
«We Cannot be Bought!»
«We reject this year's compensation report. We cannot be bought!,» said Hans-Jacob Heitz, a Zurich-based lawyer and respected shareholder advocate before the vote.
«Instead of bonuses, top management and the board had earned maluses,» using Latin to refer to rewards and punishments.
Heitz is emblematic of how the «voluntary» concessions made by Credit Suisse's top tier have failed to convince shareholders. «To relinquish bonuses is arrogant, and a mockery,» he said.
«Stock Tanked, Not Trebled»
Rohner weather the bulk of early criticism, which included an appearance by Katya Nikitenko, who criticized the bank over its links to a controversial American oil pipeline in Dakota, the DAPL.
A Swiss shareholder, Charles Guggenheim, told Rohner «you are the last remaining legacy issue at this bank!,» a sentiment met with applause.
However, CEO Thiam was also periodically criticized, such as by Hermann Struchen, an elderly Swiss retail shareholder from Altstetten, a largely working-class Zurich neighborhood.
«I have to ask myself if Mr. Thiam is the right person for the job right now. Since he has been here, the share price has tanked instead of trebling,» Struchen said.
