BCR grants bonuses to 60 executives in 2009

The BCR will grant bonuses to 60 “very good employees” of the
bank, says Dominic Bruynseels, chief executive of the biggest bank
on the Romanian market. “The remuneration committee decided that 60
very good employees will receive bonuses for their activity in
2009. There will be bonuses for this category of employees and I
think this is a very good thing,” said Bruynseels. He specified
that the employee selection had been made based on an evaluation
system implemented by the bank. “In principle we did not freeze
raises, but some adjustments need to be made,” added the head of
the BCR. 2009 was a tough year for the bank, with loan-loss
provisions eating into a lot of the operating income, whilst net
profit could be used to recapitalise the bank. The number of
employees was cut by around 1,200 to 8,766 by outsourcing some
operations. According to banking sources, the chairman of the BCR’s
Supervisory Board, Andreas Treichl (Erste CEO) and vicea-chairman
Manfred Wimmer (Erste CFO) have recently dropped annual
bonuses.