For traditional Dutch people, the composition of the leading stock exchange index AEX is increasingly detaching itself from the domestic real economy.

Not only are five of the 25 members based abroad - including three who originally had dual seats but gave up their traditional Dutch branch and are now based exclusively in London.

These are the spectacular cases of Unilever and Shell as well as the less noticed publishing and data group Relx, formerly Reed Elsevier.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in Business.

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Benjamin Fisher

Editor in Business.

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Companies that have little to do with the Netherlands but have a formal seat there have also gone public on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

Prosus, for example, is a spin-off from the South African company Naspers, which has outsourced its international business.

It does not stand for its own products or services, but invests in tech companies.

The share price has fallen sharply in the past twelve months, but with a market capitalization of EUR 93 billion, the company is still a heavyweight.

Another one was added last September: the French Vivendi group brought Universal Music Group (UMG) to the Amsterdam Stock Exchange – previously a subsidiary and the largest music group in the world.

Vivendi still holds 10 percent.

Vivendi pays three million bonuses

UMG also achieved a remarkable market value of 46 billion euros.

The company is formally based in Hilversum, but has been managed from Los Angeles for years.

It was promoted to the AEX in a fast-track procedure in December.

For this purpose, a company that was originally Dutch and even only active in its home country had to give way: the insurer ASR – proper spelling asr – which, despite good performance, was included in the AMX average value index.

Conservative stockbrokers got another hit from UMG.

As can be read from the annual report, CEO Lucian Grainge received a remuneration package of 274 million euros last year.

This sum consists largely of bonuses in connection with the IPO or previous share sales and was therefore largely paid out by Vivendi.

The bonus for the successful IPO alone amounted to 195 million euros.

In addition, 17.5 million euros came in the course of the sale of a further 10 percent of the UMG shares to a consortium led by the Chinese Tencent group in February last year.

The group has since held 20 percent of Universal.

In the summer, shortly before the IPO, Vivendi sold another 10 percent to the hedge fund Pershing Square and Partners led by Bill Ackman.

This transaction brought the Brit, who has been at the helm of the market leader since 2011, another bonus of 20.9 million euros.

Last but not least, in addition to his fixed salary of around 13 million euros, he also received variable remuneration and other benefits that totaled 27.7 million euros.

"Un-Dutch, disproportionately and vulgarly high"

A quarter of a billion euros in total - in the Netherlands that is a sum beyond all previous dimensions.

The previous record was €38.6 million, set by Prosus and his CEO Bob van Dijk.

The remuneration of the UMG boss also outraged capital-friendly actors.

It was "un-Dutch, disproportionately and vulgarly high," said Rients Abma from the Eumedion investor association in the daily newspaper "de Volkskrant".

Even the rewards that some traditional Dutch companies have given their top people have caused resentment in the past.

Heineken gave his long-serving CEO Jean-François van Boxmeer such a lavish million-dollar gift for his early departure that the group recognized an additional 7 million euros as a “tax penalty”.

That came at a time when the brewing company was shedding thousands of jobs.

Supermarket group Ahold Delhaize stood out for paying its CEO Frans Muller 122 times as much as the average employee during the pandemic crisis.

In politics, even the right-liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte has been saying for some time that too few profits from large corporations.

And the business lobby VNO-NCW was concerned about the reputation of employers.

The current package for UMG boss Grainge now puts all previous manager salaries in the shade.

8.5 billion euros in sales

The bonus for the IPO had already caused a stir a few months earlier.

Especially in Great Britain, where the situation in the music industry and the changed framework conditions caused by the triumph of streaming were recently even a topic in a parliamentary committee and the debate about the distribution of funds between artists, their industrial partners and the streaming services is generally most present.

Irrespective of how one evaluates bonus payments of such a magnitude, there is no question that Universal has developed successfully under Grainge's leadership.

Universal had a turnover of 8.5 billion euros last year.

Assuming constant exchange rates, this means growth of 17 percent compared to 2020. The EBITDA margin adjusted for special effects was 21 percent.

Last but not least, Universal benefits from the huge catalog of works that consistently makes money from streaming.

Grainge's variable compensation, however, is linked to Universal's earnings as well as market share in the US recorded music market and the chart successes there of "Universal-exclusive musicians".

If these remuneration rules apply in 2022, he will hardly have to be satisfied with the basic salary this year either.

However, 274 million euros are hardly even remotely within reach.