DBS Cuts CEO Payout

DBS group chief executive Piyush Gupta’s total pay slid nearly a quarter after the Singapore lender saw profits fall in a similar fashion last year.

Piyush Gupta’s compensation totaled S$9.18 million ($6.82 million) in 2020, according to the bank’s annual report, down 24 percent from 2019’s S$12.13 million.

Gupta’s compensation included an unchanged base salary of S$1.2 million, S$4.51 million in shares and a cash bonus of S$3.41 million. The report noted that the bonus drop was attributed to the difficult operating environment which saw profits slide 26 percent and provisions quadruple.

Last year, Gupta secured the title of Asia’s highest-paid banker after celebrating his tenth anniversary with DBS which granted him a one-time reward of 80,000 shares to recognize his «outstanding contributions» over the past decade of his leadership which saw major growth in income, profit and market capitalization.

According to Gupta, 2020 was an «inflection point» from three key perspectives that will have future implications for the bank: accelerated digital adoption, work transformation and sustainability.

On digitalization, Gupta highlighted opportunities from its crypto exchange launched last year. And on work transformation, he underlined the unforeseen risk of concentrating employees in a single location due to the varying lockdown rules in different markets and the bank’s location review of engineering resources.

And despite the difficult low rate environment, he believes DBS will be able to offset the headwinds with fee