UniCredit’s Andrea Orcel draws level with UBS chief Sergio Ermotti after record pay deal
Italian executive received €16.4mn pay package last year, a 24% rise from 2024
UniCredit’s Andrea Orcel was paid a record €16.4mn last year, drawing level with UBS’s Sergio Ermotti as the best-paid bank boss in continental Europe as the Swiss lender contends with a protracted regulatory battle over capital requirements.
Orcel received a 24 per cent pay rise from 2024, overtaking Santander’s Ana Botín — who earned €14.8mn last year — for the first time since he joined Milan-based UniCredit in 2021, according to company filings.
The Italian executive’s pay rise puts him almost on a par with Ermotti, whose remuneration remained flat last year at SFr14.9mn ($18.9mn, €16.5mn) after UBS’s shares were weighed down by Swiss government proposals to significantly increase its capital requirements.
The narrowing pay gap also underlines how Spanish and Italian lenders — regarded as among the problem children of Europe’s banking system in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis — have staged a turnaround in recent years.
Banks from the two southern European countries now account for three of the four largest continental European lenders by market capitalisation, with Santander the most valuable at €141bn.
The performance of European banks has been boosted across the board by a sharp rise in long-term interest rates.
UniCredit and Santander reported record profits last year on the back of higher net interest and fee income, with their share prices climbing about 85 per cent and 130 per cent respectively in 2025.
Both lenders also pursued M&A deals, with Santander buying UK high street lender TSB last year and offloading its Polish unit. Meanwhile Orcel has faced fierce political opposition to his moves to acquire Germany’s Commerzbank and domestic rival Banco BPM.
Ermotti’s stagnant pay underscores the difficult position in which UBS finds itself compared with global peers, and highlights how politically sensitive remuneration in the Swiss finance sector has become since its takeover of former rival Credit Suisse three years ago.
Orcel’s pay package for 2025, which was more than double his 2022 total, included €11.8mn in bonuses, which were all paid in shares and deferred for eight years. His maximum remuneration for 2026 will remain unchanged at €16.4mn, company filings show.
Orcel is still locked in a legal tussle with Santander after a Spanish court awarded him €43.5mn in compensation in 2023 for Santander’s aborted 2018 offer to make him its chief executive. Santander is appealing against the ruling to Spain’s Supreme Court, which is ongoing.
Barclays’ CS Venkatakrishnan was paid more than both Orcel and Ermotti last year, receiving a record £15mn (€17.4mn) pay package.
Unlike ECB-regulated banks, UK and Swiss lenders are not restricted by a cap on banker bonuses, with EU rules mandating that bonuses cannot be more than twice the size of fixed pay.
European bank bosses are still paid significantly less than their US counterparts, where top executives also received bigger payouts after a sector-wide share price rally.
JPMorgan Chase handed chief executive Jamie Dimon a record $43mn in 2025. David Solomon at Goldman Sachs earned $47mn, while Citigroup’s Jane Fraser received $42mn.