Highest-Paid Bankers Watch Their Compensation Decline

The federal government’s attempts to rein in the exorbitant salaries of some of the biggest Banks’ executives may be filtering down to the community bank level, or perhaps it’s just the crummy economy.

In any event, salaries of the top-paid San Diego area bankers were recently revealed in the proxy statements by PacWest Bancorp, parent of San Diego’s Pacific Western Bank, which has about $5 billion in assets and is the second largest local lender.

Leading the best-paid banker list is PacWest CEO Matt Wagner, whose compensation for last year was $1.5 million. That includes an annual salary of $750,000 and a bonus of $562,000. While that compensation is highest, the total took a dive from Wagner’s pay package the year before, when the 53-year-old received about $7.7 million, including some $6 million in stock awards, and $414,000 in other compensation, the proxy report says.

The company’s two other top officers also received less in overall pay last year than they did in 2008, mostly because of fewer or no stock awards.

Executive Vice President Daniel Platt, who also serves on the board, received total pay of $860,500, with nearly all of that, some $784,000, in the form of stock awards.

Chief financial Officer Victor Santoro’s total pay package was listed at about $749,000 — $456,000 in salary, $205,000 in bonuses, and $88,000 in “other compensation,” such as auto allowances, paid insurance premiums and other perks. In 2008, Santoro collected a pay package of $3.2 million, including some $2.4 million in stock awards.

PacWest President Michael Perdue had his total package cut drastically last year to $619,000 from the prior year’s total package of $1.9 million.

The only other local banker to crack the top-paid banker list is California Bank