UniCredit says no compensation in Orcel's pay for losses from previous work

MILAN (Reuters) - The pay package of UniCredit's new CEO, Andrea Orcel, includes no element aimed at compensating the former UBS banker for losses deriving from previous work, the Italian bank said on Monday.

Orcel is in a legal tussle with Santander, which two years ago dropped plans to make him its CEO after a disagreement over pay. A hearing on the case is scheduled in Madrid on Wednesday.

An element of the spat is a promise Santander made when it announced Orcel's appointment to pay up to 35 million euros ($41.5 million) of a 55 million-euro package that he was due to receive in future years from UBS.

UniCredit said Orcel's variable remuneration for 2021 would be a share-based award not subject to performance conditions.

His package "does not include any remuneration aimed at compensating Mr. Orcel for the possible reduction or cancellation of remunerations deriving from previous employments," it said in a report on 2021 pay.

UniCredit did not disclose the amounts of the new CEO's fixed or variable pay in the report, published on its website ahead of its annual meeting on April 15, and said it would provide details in the 2022 group remuneration policy.

It said that, in light of the coronavirus pandemic, it had halved the bonus pool for top managers in 2020 compared to budgeted figures.

UniCredit's former CEO Jean Pierre Mustier, who stepped down in February, gave up his full variable remuneration for 2020 and cut his pay by a quarter, foregoing 2.7 million euros which the bank's board donated to help with the healthcare emergency.

($1 = 0.8422 euros)

(Reporting by Valentina Za in Milan; Editing by Matthew Lewis and John Stonestreet)