The flotation of ABN Amro has been  postponed amid a storm of protest at the €100,000 pay rise accorded to the board (with the exception of ceo Gerrit Zalm). The board has since said it won’t accept the rise, but the Dutch newspapers are not ready to let go yet.

‘Are bankers out of touch with reality?’ headlines the Volkskrant. According to former junior finance mnister Willem Vermeend they are: ‘Bankers haven’t learned a thing. The whole financial sector is out of touch with reality.

‘Not to understand that a pay rise like this in a time of cutbacks, pay cuts and unemployment is incredible but typical of the generation that is ruling the roost in the financial sector at the moment: men in their fifties and sixties,’ the paper quotes him as saying.

Vermeend said that the often used argument of bankers leaving en masse for better paid jobs abroad cuts no ice ‘There’s a world-wide surplus of top bankers. We need have no fear of bankers leaving if we don’t give them more money. Nobody is waiting for Dutch bankers in the present climate.’

The Telegraaf talks of ‘bonus hunters who have not understood public opinion’.  But according to the paper, Jeroen Dijsselbloem was ‘fired up by his party to use the bonus issue to make a political statement.’

‘His signal comes through loud and clear but the floating of the bank on the stockmarket has nothing to do with the remuneration of board members. It looks as if Dijsselbloem is more interested in his political agenda than filling the coffers of the state with the money invested in ABN Amro,’ the paper concludes.

Trouw thinks the board’s decision to reject the pay rise is a wise one which will ‘appease criticism from The Hague’ and will give rise to a debate on ‘a responsible system of remuneration’.

Flotation

The Financieele Dagblad, the first to report on a letter from the central bank signalling that, apart from the pay rise scandal, the bank may have integrity issues to worry about, said ‘a dispute over pay is not a good reason to postpone flotation’.

To announce a pay rise of this magnitude in this climate is playing with fire, the paper says. But the reaction of Jeroen Dijsselbloem and most parties was over the top. To delay the flotation of the bank over a rise that had been decided on years ago is too much.

‘This kind of unexpected political manoeuvring could frighten away investors when the goal should be to sell ABN Amro as quickly and expensively as possible,’ the paper writes.