BCR offered some RON7 million as “departure” pay to the board members who left the bank, including to its former chief executive officer Dominic Bruynseels, whose mandate ended on April 1, 2012. The mandate of Oana Petrescu, executive vice-president in charge with retail banking, ended on April 24, and that of Helmuth Hintringer, vice-president of the bank’s financial department, on May 23.
BCR’s non-performing loan rate exceeded 20% in 2011 and its net profit amounted to EUR16 million. The bank switched to losses of EUR277 million last year, with a NPL rate of about 27%.
Shortly after Bruynseels left BCR, rumors had it he would apply for CEO at Banca Transilvania (TLV.RO), the third largest Romanian bank by assets in 2012. A year after Robert Rekkers left Banca Transilvania, the position is still vacant.
Also, BCR increased the number of executive board members from five to seven, which entailed additional costs.
The Supervisory Board headed by Andreas Treichl, Erste Group CEO, appointed Tomas Spurny as the new CEO of BCR in March last year. Spurny took over the position on April 24. Bernd Mittermair was named CFO on April 1 and took on the new responsibilities on May 23. Paul Ursaciuc became the bank’s operations vice-president in December.
There are reasons to believe Spurny’s pay is far from negligible as Treichl saw in him the potential savior of the bank.
Last year, Treichl publicly promised a special bonus for BCR managers if the bank returned to profit in 2013. Spurny said subsequently his main motivation towards bringing the bank back on track was not money.
In 2011, BCR allotted some RON12 million for pays to managers, but the sum was reduced to RON9.8 million possibly following a reevaluation of bonuses.
BCR reduced overall staff costs only by 1.2% in 2012 to RON575 million although it downsized staff by over 900 people to 7,161. The sum includes staff restructuring costs of RON82 million.
Market observers said, under condition of anonymity, that the current management of the bank might exaggerate some of the bank’s problems so that a possible success of the restructuring program will be regarded as a significant breakthrough, and a possible failure will be easier to explain.
(English version by Ioana Tudor)