UBS chief executive paid $9mn after revamp

Sergio Ermotti, chief executive officer of UBS, arrives prior to his keynote address at the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Zurich, Switzerland on Wednesday. UBS drew fire yesterday as it announced it paid Ermotti almost $9mn in 2012 and welcomed a new investment bank chief with a $26mn package, just as the Swiss bank is in the process of firing 10,000 staff. Executive pay in Switzerland remains a heated issue five years after the near collapse of UBS, blamed by many on a big bonus culture driving bankers to take excessive risks. “UBS has still not learnt from the mistakes of the past,” said Brigitta Moser-Harder, an outspoken retail shareholder of UBS who campaigned for strict controls on executive pay that were adopted in a Swiss referendum earlier this month. Investment bank chief Andrea Orcel, who is overseeing a radical restructuring of that operation in which 2,000 jobs are expected to go, secured a package worth 25mn Swiss francs ($26.27mn), according to UBS’s annual report yesterday. Moser-Harder told Reuters that Orcel’s payment was outrageous: “Not only did the investment bank contribute a loss in the billions, it is also being massively scaled back.”