More than seven years after the financial crisis, bankers in general are still paid too much, Deutsche Bank Chief Executive John Cryan has told an academic conference.
“Compensation is still too high,” Cryan told the conference ethics and culture in the financial sector at Goethe University on Monday. “We’ve just paid people too much across the board.”
While many people in the banking sector were working to improve their performance each day, there were still some who believed they had a right to outsized compensation even when performance was negative from the client’s viewpoint.
Banks needed to improve governance and controls and take away the incentive to act unilaterally, he said. Bankers ought to be paid less and should have variable pay paid out over a longer period of time - and clawed back if needed.
“I’m 100 percent in favour of claw-back,” said Cryan, who took the helm of Germany’s biggest lender in July following the departure of Anshu Jain.
Asked if he himself could live without a bonus, Cryan said he could.
“I have no idea why I was offered a contract with a bonus because I promise you I will not work any harder – or any less hard – in any year, in any day, because someone’s going to pay me more or less,” he said.
“There is no behaviour of mine that is driven by this contract, so I don’t see how it’s relevant,” Cryan said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Gould)
