”We will continue with incentive compensation. Our experience shows that it works when targets are set correctly,” says Marcus Wallenberg, SEB’s chairman of the board in an interview in Swedish business daily Dagens Industri published Friday. Annika Falkengren, who is also quoted in Dagens Industri, underlines that SEB’s business model is very different compared to other large Swedish banks.
In the interview, held Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Marcus Wallenberg repeats what he has said on several occasions.
´"SEB will of course follow all new regulation regarding incentive compensation and naturally the bank absorbs what is said in the ongoing public debate on the issue," he told the newspaper.
Talking about bonuses – short-term incentive compensation for 2009 – he says:
"Our employees will notice in some way that their total remuneration is affected, but we don’t have the details ready yet and the board hasn’t discussed the issue. We must of course take all the bank’s stakeholders into consideration."
Wallenberg underlines that he won’t talk about possible changes to bonus levels ahead of SEB’s annual accounts presentation on 10 February.
Asked if fixed salaries will rise in the future as a consequence of lower short-term bonuses he answers:
"Internationally we can already see that fixed salaries have gone up, and as I said we will review our situation. We will continue with incentive compensation. Our experience shows that they work when targets are set correctly."
Falkengren, in the interview explains that SEB’s business is different compared to its Swedish rivals.
"Our anatomy is different. Around 70 per cent of SEB’s business is with corporate clients and we handle half of all money owned by wealthy Swedes. Our competitors are often large foreign banks. We recently lost three staff to Deutsche Bank’s Stockholm branch. This is what our world looks like," she says.