Finance minister says he underestimated ABN Amro pay row

Finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told MPs on Thursday that the commotion surrounding a €100,000 pay rise for six ABN Amro board members was much worse than he had expected.

Speaking during a debate on the pay row in parliament, Dijsselbloem also admitted that perhaps he should have better informed parliament about the agreement to increase pay last year.

‘I did not live up to expectations,’ the minister said.

Last year, Dijsselbloem told MPs that ABN Amro executives had not had a pay rise in 2012 and 2013. But he did not state explicitly their pay would go up in 2014, news agency ANP reports.

Meanwhile, the head of the Dutch financial services regulator Merel van Vroonhoven has described the row as damaging to the recovery of confidence in Dutch banks.

‘The supervisory board should have asked itself if this [the pay rise] was the right thing to do,’ she told the Financieele Dagblad in an interview.