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Citigroup has lifted chief executive Jane Fraser’s pay by 6 per cent in 2023 to $26mn, despite the bank’s profits falling almost 40 per cent amid a sweeping reorganisation.
The bank said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that her remuneration, consisting of $1.5mn in base salary and a $24.5mn bonus, was based on Fraser streamlining Citi’s strategy and announcing “the most consequential set of changes to its organisational and management model since the 2008 financial crisis”.
The changes Fraser outlined last year are resulting in at least 20,000 job cuts at Citi, the third-largest US bank by assets.
Fraser, a veteran of the consulting firm McKinsey and investment bank Goldman Sachs, took over in early 2021 with a mandate to fix Citi after the bank had underperformed its peers for years. As part of her strategy, she has announced plans to pull out of retail banking from 14 overseas markets.
Fraser is also trying to release Citi from a 2020 consent order with banking regulators that required it to upgrade processes and technology after it mistakenly wired $900mn to creditors of one of its clients, Revlon.
Rivals JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman have also raised their chief executives’ 2023 pay.
The pay of JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, whose bank reported record profits for 2023, rose about 4 per cent to $36mn. James Gorman, who stepped down as chief executive of Morgan Stanley at the start of 2024, was paid $37mn, up 17.5 per cent year on year. Goldman lifted David Solomon’s pay by 24 per cent to $31mn.
Bank of America cut the pay of Brian Moynihan, its top executive, by 3 per cent, or $1mn, to $29mn.
In deciding Fraser’s pay, Citi said the compensation committee at its board of directors had also considered “competitive market levels of pay for CEOs of peer institutions”.