For one at UBS, a $26M pay day

GENEVA, Switzerland, March 14 (UPI) -- Swiss bank UBS says it paid the new head of its investment unit $26 million to make up for the deal he left behind at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The package that amounts to a "golden handshake" for executive Andrea Orcel dwarfs the $9.3 million welcoming package the bank shelled out for Sergio Ermotti, the bank's chief executive officer, The New York Times reported Thursday.

"In line with market practice, he received awards as a replacement for deferred compensation and benefits forfeited by his previous employer as a result of his joining UBS," the bank said in its annual report, which was released Thursday.

The revelation comes just two weeks after Swiss voters approved a referendum that gives company shareholders a vote on payment packages for executives and board directors.

Orcel, who worked at Merrill Lynch for 20 years, will take over a UBS unit that incurred a $2.8 billion loss in 2012, the Times said.

The annual report, meanwhile, said the UBS bonus pool for 2012 dropped 7 percent to $2.6 billion. It also said that it had retrieved $63.1 million from employees in a pay retraction that occurred as a result of the London inter-bank offered rate manipulation scandal, for which UBS paid regulators $450 million.