The non-executive head of ABN Amro’s remuneration committee has stepped down in the wake of the row over a 17% pay rise for six members of the executive board.

Peter Wakkie, who headed the salary advisory committee on the supervisory board, considers himself to be responsible for the decision to give the bank’s top executives a €100,000 pay rise.

That decision has been slammed by politicians, unions and consumers and led finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem to state the rise was morally undesirable.

Wakkie told the NRC the supervisory board considered board members had the right to a pay rise of €100,000. The supervisory board realised the decision would be controversial but not that it would create such a storm of protest, he said.

‘I had expected the minister would react differently,’ Wakkie told the NRC. ‘That he would say, my predecessor took this decision and what I think about it is irrelevant.’

The pay rise is included in the pay and conditions deal agreed with the new board when they took over to ready the bank for privatisation but had not yet been implemented.

MPs want to know from Dijsselbloem exactly what he agreed with ABN Amro in salary talks last year.