Bankers’ pay in the Netherlands is back to pre-crisis levels due to rises in basic salaries, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Friday.

The paper says actual bonuses did not reach 2007 levels last year, but were much higher than 2009.
The paper bases its claims on interviews with bankers, headhunters and advice bureaus.
‘Many basic salaries have gone up 25% in the past year,’ Chris de Groot of executive search bureau Financial Assets told the paper.

Bonuses

Another source who did not want to be named put the increase at 50%. The basic salary of merchant bankers has, for example, been raised from €120,000 to €180,000. ‘But bonuses are 40% down on 2007,’ he told the paper.
Dutch bankers will hear how big their 2010 bonuses will be over the coming few days. Merchant bankers can count on 100% to 200% of salary depending on how long they have been in the job, the paper says.
Insiders argue that Dutch banks have to pay staff well to stop them defecting to foreign competition.
That theory was emphasised this week when ING CEO Jan Hommen told a government committee he ‘could not run an international company without performance related pay’, the paper points out.
Under the Dutch bank’s own code of conduct, bonuses for senior executives are not supposed to be higher than 100% of basic salary.