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The wealth manager Julius Baer is paying the entire Executive Board compensation of CHF 49.2 million for 2024. (archive picture)
Keystone
The management team at Julius Baer has also put the Signa debacle behind them in their own wallets. Bonuses increased again in the 2024 financial year, as did the total compensation of the top managers and the Board of Directors.
The entire Executive Board, which consists of 16 people, received compensation of CHF 49.2 million, according to the asset manager's annual report published on Monday. 43.2 million, excluding lost bonuses paid to Thomas Frauenlob, who joined the Bears from UBS in the course of the year.
Payments to the Bear management have thus returned to their former level. In the previous year, the old entire management team, which still consisted of ten people, received only CHF 13.0 million. Before the Signa debacle, the ten-member Executive Board had received a total of CHF 35.5 million in 2022.
The reason for the "dent" in 2023 was the complete write-off of CHF 606 million for a loan to the Austrian bankrupt René Benko. As a result, the bonuses paid to CEO Philipp Rickenbacher, who has since resigned, and five other members of the Executive Board were canceled.
Excluding the extra payment to Frauenlob, Nic Dreckmann remained the highest-earning Baer manager. The latter had headed Julius Baer as interim CEO until two months ago following Rickenbacher's resignation. Dreckmann received total compensation of CHF 5.8 million in 2024, compared to CHF 2.0 million in the previous year.
By way of comparison: in the last "normal" financial year, former CEO Rickenbach earned 6.0 million francs in 2022.
The soon-to-depart Chairman of the Board of Directors Romeo Lacher, who has been publicly blamed for the Signa debacle, also earned significantly more again in 2024. Lacher's salary amounted to CHF 0.90 million after CHF 0.65 million in the previous year. However, he did not come close to the "pre-Signa figure" of 1.09 million francs.
The bank had announced at the time that Lacher and other members of the Board would waive their share-based remuneration in the wake of the Signa crisis. In total, remuneration for members of the Board of Directors amounted to CHF 3.3 million last year, compared to CHF 3.0 million in the previous year.
The write-off of the Signa loan caused Julius Baer's annual profit to fall by half to CHF 454 million in 2023. In 2024, it rose again to 1.02 billion.
17.03.2025, 08:25
