Heads of Swedbank's Baltic subsidiaries to receive no bonuses
23.11.2009, 12:28Swedbank Group has decided to pay bonuses for this year's results only to the heads of these Swedbank units that made a profit, reports ERR.
This means that heads of the bank's Baltic subsidiaries would not receive any bonuses for this year's results.
Swedbank is reported to have allocated about a billion kroons to its executives in bonuses. In comparison, SEB is believed to have allocated 3.5 billion kroons for bonuses.
Swedbank AB, the largest lender in the three Baltic countries, reported its third consecutive quarterly net loss after loan losses and provisions in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania rose more than sevenfold.
Swedbank had a third-quarter net loss of 3.34 billion kronor ($483 million), compared with profit of 2.47 billion a year earlier Loan losses and provisions rose to 6.12 billion kronor, from 812 million kronor a year earlier.
Loan losses at Swedbank and SEB AB, the second-largest lender in the Baltics, have soared as the three Baltic states struggle with the steepest recessions in the 27-member European Union. Swedbank has raised 15.1 billion kronor in its second rights offer in less than a year, following a capital injection of 12.4 billion kronor from shareholders last year.
“We see signs in Baltic banking that credit quality is no longer weakening at the same rate as before,” Swedbank said in the statement. “The level of new impaired loans was somewhat lower during the third quarter than in the second quarter and our forecast that new impaired loans will be lower during the second half of 2009 than the first half remains unchanged.”