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John Hourican, the Dubliner CEO of the Bank of Cyprus, was paid €2.1 million last year, putting him among the best-paid Irish bankers in the world, The Times has reported.
It said that Hourican, previously linked to the chief executive role at both Bank of Ireland and AIB, earns more than twice the pay of the bosses at Ireland’s pillar banks.
Hourican, who made his name at Royal Bank of Scotland, enjoyed a 27% rise in salary in 2017. Bank of Cyprus announced a loss of €554m for the year, having set aside provisions for bad loans totalling €953m.
Hourican, who made his name at Royal Bank of Scotland, enjoyed a 27% rise in salary in 2017
Hourican has committed to staying at the Bank of Cyprus until the end of the year.
Hourican’s pay, more than 10 times that of the bank’s only other executive director Christodoulos Patsalides, is below that of David Duffy (€2.4m), the former AIB chief now in charge of Clydesdale Bank.
He resigned as chief executive of the Cypriot bank in 2015, and returned to live with his family in Dublin. Hourican later reversed the decision.
The former PWC accountant is encountering difficulties familiar to some of his Irish counterparts, said The Times.
Hourican last month urged the business community on the island to increase the legal and political pressure to move towards a faster solution to the issue of non-performing loans.
The bank has about €7 billion of such loans, with suspected high levels of strategic default, where borrowers take advantage of weak legislation regarding debt enforcement.
Moves to address pay levels at the two pillar banks has effectively been mothballed until the Central Bank of Ireland calls closure on the tracker mortgage overcharging scandal. (The Times)
