BNP Unable to Reduce Pay Without Losing Traders, de Galhau Says
March 09, 2010, 10:06 AM ESTBy Andrew MacAskill
March 9 (Bloomberg) -- BNP Paribas SA, France’s largest bank, won’t be able to reduce traders’ pay any further without losing them to rivals, an executive said.
The Paris-based lender paid its employees three times less in cash for 2009 than it would have before the credit crisis, retail banking head Francois Villeroy de Galhau said at a conference in Milan today. A clampdown on banking pay by European governments without an international agreement would leave the region’s lenders at a disadvantage, he added.
“We are probably at the lowest point of the bracket where we can be without losing our traders because we are in an international game,” de Galhau told the conference. “Here we need an international answer.”
Governments in Europe and the U.S. are facing pressure to limit bankers’ compensation after financial firms were bailed out by taxpayers during the credit crisis. BNP Paribas SA set aside 3.4 billion euros ($4.6 billion) for compensation and related charges at its investment-banking division last year, a smaller portion of revenue than New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and London-based Barclays Plc.
--With assistance from Fabio Benedetti-Valentini in Paris. Editors: Edward Evans, James Amott.
To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew MacAskill in Milan at amacaskill@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net
