Citigroup shareholders reject $15M pay package for chief executive Vikram Pandit at annual meeting

Citigroup shareholders on Tuesday rejected a plan to pay the bank’s chief executive Vikram Pandit $15 million, highlighting public anger over generous salaries on Wall Street.

The Financial Times said Citigroup was the first major US bank to suffer majority dissent in a “say on pay” vote since the legislation was introduced in 2010 after the global financial crisis.

Pandit, who took the helm of Citigroup in 2007, pocketed $15 million in 2011, including a $1.67 million salary and a $5.3 million cash bonus, the New York Times reported. He also received a retention package valued at $40 million — all this in a year when the bank's shares fell 44 percent, according to Forbes.

Bloomberg said 55 percent of shareholders at the bank's annual meeting in Dallas rejected the executive pay plan that gave tens of millions of dollars to Pandit and his fellow directors. 

Pandit’s salary package is similar to executive pay levels before the credit crisis struck, according to Reuters. Pandit received $1 in 2010 and just $128,741 in 2009 after the bank received a $45 billion bailout from US taxpayers to help it survive the credit crisis.

The vote is non-binding but Citigroup chairman Richard Parson said the bank took the “matter seriously” and would look to change the way it calculates top executives’ pay, The Guardian reported.

Citigroup had argued that the generous salaries would help attract and retain top talent, Bloomberg said.

The annual meeting comes a day after Citigroup reported a stronger-than-expected $2.9 billion first-quarter profit and $19.4 billion in revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported.

More from GlobalPost: Goldman Sachs slashes compensation for its chairman, Lloyd Blankfein, by 35% to $12.4M