OCBC Chief Executive Receives Pay Rise

His remuneration comprised a base salary of S$1.24 million, a bonus of $5.84 million, deferred shares worth S$3.89 million, and other benefits worth $102,000, but he donated more than half his base salary to charity.

OCBC CEO Samuel Tsien’s pay for 2109 grew to S$11.1 million, up 3.5 percent from $10.7 million last year, according to the bank’s annual report, filed with Singapore Exchange on Tuesday.

But not all of that is going to his pocket, with the chief of Singapore’s oldest bank donating S$650,600 from his 2019 base salary to support community and environmental causes under its #OCBCCares Program, without asking for tax deduction benefits, the bank said.

For the full year of 2019, OCBC posted record net profits of S$4.87 billion ($3.48 billion), an 8-percent rise from the year before, driven by strong performances across its banking, wealth management and insurance businesses.

With Covid-19 wrecking havoc on the global economy, the bank’s outlook for 2020 is more muted.

Although we are hopeful that a gradual recovery of consumer confidence and sentiments will start to set in towards the end of 2020, a stronger and steady economic recovery will likely be a 2021 event,» Tsien and chairman Ooi Sang Kuang said in the opening message.

In the opening message, Tsien noted the bank’s progress in contributing towards a more sustainable future, highlighting that the bank brought in almost half of its S$8 billion in sustainable finance assets in 2019 alone, including clean and renewable energy projects using solar and wind.

The bank previously declared its intention to build a sustainable finance portfolio of S$10 billion by 2022

While not receiving double-digit pay hikes as they did last year, the CEOs of Singapore’s «Big Three» still managed to grow their coffers on the back of record years at the banks.

Despite his pay rise, Tsien still trails Piyush Gupta, Asia’s highest-paid banker, who received S$12.1 million in 2019 – about 2-percent more than 2018 – in his 10th year at the helm of DBS.

United Overseas Bank (UOB) deputy chairman and CEO Wee Ee Cheong received S$10.75 million ($7.53 million) in 2019, a 1.8-percent increase from the year before.