Finance Min.: Cap bonuses of all corporate directors

Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem of Finance wants to cap all bonuses for company directors at no more than 20 percent of their annual salary, he said in the Volkskrant on Thursday. He believes this is the only way to restore the balance between executives and ordinary employees. A committee, the Van Manen committee, was established to prepare a new code of conduct for listed companies. But according to Dijsselbloem, the committee made hardly any suggestions on how to temper top salaries and bring it more in balance with the rest of the company. The bonuses only continue to rise and that put the relationship between executives and the average employee "out of balance", he said to the newspaper. He pointed to the financial sector, where bonuses were capped at 20 percent of annual salary as a condition for state aid during the financial crisis. The initial assessment of this measure showed that it had little to no negative consequences.