Norwegian’s top officials Jacob Schram and Geir Karlsen were paid NOK 11 million each in bonuses in May, according to the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN).
Former CEO Schram was fired by the company’s new board on Sunday and replaced by Karlsen, who was previously the CFO of the company. The two received an extra bonus of NOK 11 million each from the previous board, DN writes. The bonuses were first mentioned by E24.
The information was confirmed by Lars Boilesen, who joined the board of Norwegian in June, and chaired the board’s remuneration committee.
According to him, Schram had a fixed salary of NOK 7 million, a “restructuring bonus” of NOK 11 million and NOK 14 million with a nine-month work obligation, a total of more than NOK 30 million.
Strong reactions
“As chair of the remuneration committee, we appealed to Jacob Schram that he should reduce his severance package to one year’s salary without compulsory work. Unfortunately, we did not achieve that,” Boilesen wrote in a message to the newspaper.
Boilesen further told the newspaper that the new board has chosen to put an end to such remuneration of the top management, as the news of the bonuses provoked strong reactions.
Boilesen told E24 that the rest of the management team received a nine-month salary as a bonus. This means that a total of NOK 30.3 million was paid in bonuses, including the NOK 22 million to Schram and Karlsen, if the salary was the same in May as it was last year, according to E24.
Former chairman of the board Niels Smedegaard has described the payments as a so-called “retention bonus,” a scheme intended to ensure that key personnel does not leave a company in the middle of a demanding period.
Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayFinance
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Fantastic, and the former workers in CDG, I‘m one of the pilots got fired without any payment. That counts to my 270 colleagues as well. Same situation in Rome and Barcelona as well. So money enough for these gentlemen in Oslo.