CEO pay ratios dropped year over year at 13 of the 20 largest publicly traded U.S. banks by assets, showed an analysis by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Last year, Citigroup Inc. reported the highest CEO pay ratio in the industry as former CEO Michael Corbat's $23 million pay package was 420x higher than Citi's $54,718 median employee salary.
However, that was lower than Citi's 2019 ratio of 482x as Corbat's pay packet dropped nearly 10% last year. Citigroup's board cut Corbat's incentive compensation award for 2020 partially due to Citi's $400 million fine from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for the bank's lax internal controls that allowed an accidental transfer of $900 million to Revlon Inc.'s lenders.
While CEO pay ratios declined at most large banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co. bucked the trend. Median employee compensation dropped $329 over the last year to $80,102, and CEO Jamie Dimon received a slight pay bump, making his $31.7 million pay packet 395x larger than the median salary.
At Wells Fargo & Co., the pay ratio dropped significantly due to a nearly 13% year-on-year increase in median employee compensation and a more than 40% decline in CEO Charles Scharf's pay package. That put the bank's pay ratio at 274x, down from 550x in 2019. Last year, Scharf received $20.4 million in total compensation, compared to the company's median employee salary of $74,416.
Meanwhile, a modest $610 increase in median employee compensation at Bank of America Corp. and a slight dip in CEO Brian Moynihan's pay pushed the bank's pay ratio to 274x in 2020, down from 276x in 2019. Moynihan's pay declined based on variable compensation linked to company performance. This was reflected mostly through a 0.2% decrease in the value of his stock awards.
In a related development, earlier this year, BofA said it would give bonuses or stock awards to employees in recognition of the unprecedented challenges they faced during the pandemic.
Among publicly traded U.S. banks with a CEO in the role for the full year and at least $20 billion in assets as of June 30, 2021, the median CEO pay ratio was 73x in 2020. Atlanta-based Ameris Bancorp had the narrowest gap among the group as CEO H. Palmer Proctor Jr.'s $2.7 million compensation was 33x larger than the median compensation of $82,270.
San Francisco-based First Republic Bank's median employee compensation of $158,100 was the highest among the group. Puerto Rico-based First BanCorp. posted the lowest median employee compensation in the group at $33,244.
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