Citigroup raises Scottish chief Jane Fraser’s pay to £20.6m while slashing 20,000 jobs

Citigroup has handed its Scottish chief executive Jane Fraser a six per cent pay rise to $26m (£20.6m) for 2023, citing her bold plan to overhaul the Wall Street bank.

The bank confirmed in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that it gave Fraser a $1.5m base salary and $24.5m bonus last year due to her progress in the group’s biggest restructuring in decades.

Citi, which is the US’ third-largest bank by assets, announced last month that it would cut 20,000 jobs – around 10 per cent of its global workforce – by 2025 or 2026.

The news came as Citi posted its worst quarterly loss ($1.8bn) since the financial crisis, which Fraser herself called “very disappointing”.

The underperformance was driven by the steep devaluation of Argentina’s currency, impairments from exiting Russia and $800m in costs tied to Fraser’s restructuring.

Fraser took the reins at Citi in 2021 to become the first, and still only, female CEO of a Wall Street Bank.

She plans to streamline the bank and tackle bureaucracy by pulling out of retail banking in 14 countries and reducing the number of management layers within the group.

Citi said its compensation committee also weighed “competitive market levels of pay for CEOs of peer institutions”.

It is joining rivals JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman in raising their bosses’ pay for last year, although Fraser remains the lowest paid of the group.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, saw his pay rise some four per cent to $36m on the back of record profits for world’s largest bank by market capitalisation.

Morgan Stanley’s ex-CEO James Gorman, who stepped down at the start of this year, saw a 17.5 per cent pay rise to $37m, while Goldman chief David Solomon’s pay jumped 24 per cent to $31m.

Meanwhile, Bank of America cut boss Brian Moynihan’s pay by three per cent to $29m after annual profits fell four per cent in 2023.