Pay cuts for CBA brass
Top management at Commonwealth Bank will cop pay cuts in the order of A$60 million, a sanction from the board as part of the bank's response to APRA's recent prudential review of the bank.On Friday CBA said the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority had "endorsed its Remedial Action Plan, which details CBA's response to the 35 recommendations" of the inquiry, released at the beginning of May."Senior executive remuneration consequences will be more than $60 million, from reductions to variable remuneration and/or partial or full lapsing of outstanding deferred variable remuneration awards," the bank said. CBA said "this includes the actions taken by the CBA Board in August 2017 to reduce non-executive director fees, and reduce to zero the short-term variable remuneration for group executives for last financial year."Last year's annual report shows the bank's top executives already forfeited in the order of $17 million in long term bonuses.CBA chief executive Matt Comyn said in a statement that the bank "fully recognises we will not be judged by the plan or by completing milestones, but by sustainable improvements in customer and risk outcomes."He said the remedial action plan "also provides a comprehensive assurance framework." Promontory Financial Group has been appointed as the independent reviewer. Promontory undertook a similar role in relation to the Open Advice Review program, completed last year."There will be regular reviews of progress against committed milestones with APRA [and] CBA will report publicly on its progress against the remedial plan," Comyn said.CBA also confirmed on Friday that plans were underway to sell a second offshore banking entity.Its South African banking business, TymeDigital, purchased for around $40 million in 2015 is under review.Commonwealth Bank's Indonesian banking subsidiary, PT Bank Commonwealth (which has rolled out the TYME technology) is also likely to be sold.