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Bank CEO live better than other stock market listed company’s hard working Bosses

Sunday, 26 February 2012
Some people say that money cannot buy happiness. Others say people who make such statements are loosers who have concluded that there is no way they will ever make good money in their lives.

But there is big difference in the way different sectors of the economy make money. Banks deal with money – which is not theirs and by the nature of their industry, they are supposed to keep our money. But the work of the bank has changed such that the banks that keep our money tend to make more money than other hard working sectors of the economy. As the worse of all in that bankers have become more arrogant and show their wealth as easy as they like even of the economic situation of the hard workers is not easy.

In Sweden today, bankers are just making a lot of money without really producing anything where as a company such as Saab that produce very impressive cars is growing bankrupt. The point is that bankers just take the money deposited by people and companies and use it to create their own money. Officials of these banks therefore live large as if they created the banks while struggling real producers such as the farmers, automakers such as Saab and the likes will go bankrupt because the banks will refuse to lend to them.

Thus the question asked by many is what do top banks manager really do that warrant them treatment as royals reminiscent of the period before the French revolution France -  remains extremely hard to answer.

We have seen how in the past weeks there were intense struggle in the UK where banks there are making looses but their top managers are being awarded astronomical bonuses.  In 2004 when I studies financial economics, my lecturer Clas Whilborg gave us a great lecture which became a guild line in business management sense on rewards and bonuses to top management in big firms and which also dealt with the golden parachute phenomenon then. These rewards had to do with performances and business ethics but did not stand in any way to kill what is described as wealth creation.
 
As a student going out with a proper business grilling and training the expectation was that these ideas techniques and knowledge will be applied and used in assessing how top businesses and bank reward their executives and management based on their performances. In 2011-2012, that has turned to be the opposite. Top management are not rewarded according to their performances. The worse is in the banks. How the banks’ performances are assessed is a discussion for another day but in Sweden, bankers have been living well. Take a look at the following

The CEO of Sweden’s giant bank SEB, Annika Falkengren has the most expensive villa when compared with all the directors of the Stockholm Stock Exchange's biggest corporations.  However, to show that greed is a matter of individual, in the bottom of the list can be found one of her toughest rivals, CEO of also another great bank Handelsbanken.
SEB's CEO Annika Falkengren’s house and its grounds in Djursholm in Stockholm has a rateable value of Skr15.6 million. The villa is 352 square meters and the plot has its own stone staircase leading down to the sea.

Annika Falkengren bought the house in 2007 from H & M chairman Stefan Persson (who builds his company with his bare hands). The purchase price then was reported to be Skr21 million.

The SEB's CEO also owns a summer house in Skåne Torekov worth Skr3 million and another property in Varberg which is taxed at an additional Skr1 million.
Annika Falkengren is therefore one of the richest CEO out there and this means that she has been properly reward as being an extraordinary bank manager. The question now is what additional value has she really brought into the banks? Some one might want to help us with his…

Second is industry colleague from Swedebank, Michael Wolf, whose properties are valued at a total of Skr10.3 million.

However, not all bank managers live so extravagantly expensive. SEB's competitor Handelsbanken’s CEO Pär Boman tries to live with much less. Pär Boman’s apartment in Stockholm has a rateable value of over Skr2 million. Thus he is in the list's bottom layer.

According to the Swedish Land registry Survey of records, the cheapest property is owned by Hakon Invest CEO, Claes Göran Sylven, and this is worth Skr 600,000.

The most common mail addresses for the Stock Exchange mightiest is Djursholm and Saltsjöbaden in Stockholm. Even Nacka and the centre of the capital are popular.

Many foreign CEOs are missing in the National Land Survey records. This applies to Alliance Oil manager Arsen Idrisov and Lundin Mining CEO Paul Conibear.

Even Christian Clausen, CEO of Nordea, is missing in the registry. The official residence which the big bank arranged for him was certainly not a hot potato in the category. Christian Clausen does not own any real estate in Sweden. His employer, Nordea owns where he lives.

It is likely that many more of the directors including stock market giants had an official residence  arranged by their employers.

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