MILAN (Reuters) – UniCredit Chief Executive Andrea Orcel’s pay package rose by almost a third last year to 13.2 million euros ($13.8 million) including a one-off share award, the Italian bank said in documents published on its website late on Tuesday.
The former UBS investment banker, who was already one of Europe’s best-paid bank CEOs, stands to earn as much as 16.4 million euros in 2025 if he manages to exceed this year’s targets, the bank said.
UniCredit said it had decided to award top executives a one-off share award in 2024 after the European Banking Authority (EBA) provided guidelines last year on how to calculate the price of payments in shares.
The CEO’s one-off share award to offset the impact of the EBA clarification is worth 2.2 million euros, UniCredit said.
Overall, the one-off payments amount to 43.5 million euros, or 7% of the bank’s overall bonus pool for 2024, to be assigned to the CEO, top executives and 858 senior managers identified as “material risk takers” (MRT).
UniCredit said 134 staff had entered the MRT group in 2024, but no significant change to its composition is expected in 2025.
Including the one-off share award, the average individual bonus payment for MRT managers totalled up to 199,000 euros in 2024, UniCredit said, up from 155,000 euros in 2023.
The overall bonus pool rose 13% to a maximum 625 million euros, up from 551 million euros, it said.
($1 = 0.9537 euros)
(Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by David Goodman)
