Tue, Apr 23rd 2024
Shareholder discontent looms over UBS’s upcoming AGM, with criticism focused on CEO Sergio Ermotti’s CHF 14 million salary and the bank’s sustainability policies.
Sergio Ermotti’s salary is likely to cause a stir among shareholders at the UBS Annual General Meeting on Wednesday.
Although the bank’s CEO has been “successful according to all the information available to date”, his remuneration is “grossly exaggerated”, criticised the shareholders’ association Actares in the run-up to the meeting.
The salary of just over CHF 14 million that UBS CEO Ermotti received for his nine months in office in 2023 “goes beyond the usual scope”, Actares wrote in a press release on Tuesday.
In view of the strong commitment of the Swiss Confederation and “potentially of taxpayers” following the takeover of CS by UBS, this salary is “completely incomprehensible and an affront to Swiss shareholders, the government and the Swiss financial system”. Actares therefore recommends that shareholders reject all remuneration items at the AGM.
The organisation is also dissatisfied with UBS’s sustainability efforts. For example, the commitment to phase out fossil fuels is missing. In addition, the targets should be externally validated as soon as possible in order to strengthen their credibility and comparability.
Overall, Actares rejects more than half of all proposals put forward by the Board of Directors. The shareholder representative Ethos shows somewhat less rejection.
With nine out of a total of 29 agenda items, it rejects around a third of the proposals. Ethos is also against the adoption of the remuneration and sustainability reports.
©Keystone/SDA
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