What don't you do for 50 million dollars. Even the most overpaid banker in Europe, the Roman Andrea Orcel, already renamed by the Guardian "the Cristiano Ronaldo of bank managers", does not feel like giving up lightly and has left spearheads for a legal battle, which is announced bloody, against Banco Santander, the largest bank in Europe which was about to hire him as its new helmsman.
The dispute is all in the 50 million that Orcel was to receive at the end of his mandate from UBS and which, unable to collect it due to early resignations, he thought of asking Santander as a salary bonus, which however not only rejected the request but also , sensationally, withdrew from naming Orcel as its new CEO. Open up the sky and a big party for the lawyers of half of Europe.
Orcel is known for the staggering salaries he's always managed to land whenever he's changed employers. Yesterday "La Repubblica" painstakingly lined them up, one after the other: 33,6 million in 2008 from Merrill Lynch while the bank was going bankrupt and 26 million as an entry bonus from the Swiss Ubs which would have recognized him as "deferred premiums" another 50 if he left at the end of the contract. Having chosen to leave early, Orcel forwarded the request to his new employer. But this time, unless the lawyers work a miracle, he didn't score. Because, as was said, Santander not only didn't grant him the 50 million dollars requested but – at the behest of executive chairman Ana Botin – it even gave up appointing him CEO.
If an agreement is not found, rags will fly between the two parties with dizzying sums at stake. But, however it turns out, neither Ana Botin nor Andrea Orcel will end up broke. But neither of them - that's for sure - is making a good impression.
