The details of Westpac's top executives' pay in the bank's 2015 annual report, released yesterday, provided another, if periodic, perspective on the progress of its business. Five of the top seven executives reporting to the CEO incurred cuts in their short-term bonuses over the year to September 2015.

The average short-term bonus of the half dozen executives for whom comparable data is available in the report was, on average, only 73 per cent of that handed out in 2014.The bonus cuts hit the top management: Philip Coffey, deputy CEO; John Arthur, the chief operating officer; George Frazis, chief executive for the consumer bank; Brad Cooper, CEO for BT Financial and Christine Parker, group executive, human resources and corporate affairs.Peter King, the chief financial officer and Alexandra Holcomb, the chief risk officer. qualified for higher bonuses.At ANZ, which also released its annual report this week, the board's view of executive performance may also be sobering.
ANZ said the 2015 target for the "Annual Variable Remuneration award level for the CEO, Mike Smith represents one third of target remuneration" while for other key executives this was 44 per cent of their target remuneration.ANZ spelled out more of its rationale, with a "below target" outcome on the goal of being a "high performing" bank.The board assessed the bank as being on target or above target on four other measures.Cash bonuses for eight named ANZ executives (with 2014 comparisons) were either frozen, fell or were only trivially increased. For the CEO, the deputy CEO, Graham Hodges and the incoming CEO Shayne Elliott the board kept bonuses level in 2015.