AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag on Tuesday denounced the salary paid for the 2021 financial year to the chief executive of Air France-KLM, Benjamin Smith, as the airline group lost the year last 3.3 billion euros.
“It’s unacceptable and what I really don’t understand is that we can want it and that people think it can be normal,” she said in an interview with Dutch radio RTL. after the publication of the Air France-KLM annual report.
This report shows that Benjamin Smith will receive several million euros in salaries, bonuses and bonuses for the 2021 financial year, even if the payment of the latter will be delayed.
Contacted by Reuters, a group representative said that the fixed part of Benjamin Smith’s salary had remained unchanged since the start of the pandemic and that he would not receive any bonuses until Air France-KLM had reimbursed the essential part of the public loans granted to avoid bankruptcy at the height of the health crisis.
Sigrid Kaag has warned that the Dutch State, a 14.3% shareholder of Air France-KLM, will vote against the resolution on the CEO’s salary at the next general meeting of shareholders, scheduled for May .
(Toby Sterling; French version Nicolas Delame, editing by Matthieu Protard)
Copyright © 2022 Thomson Reuters
Are you following this action?
Receive all the information about KLM in real time: