AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem wants bonuses for all managers in The Netherlands to be capped at 20 percent of base pay.
While a European Union-wide cap of 100 percent was enacted in the financial sector to limit risk taking in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Dutch government went further, capping bankers' bonuses at 20 percent.
In an opinion piece in De Volkskrant published on Thursday, Dijsselbloem argued the rule should be universally adopted, noting that total pay packages for executives have more than doubled over the past 20 years,
He said that executives of Heineken (AS:HEIO) , Unilever (AS:UNc) and supermarket operator Ahold (AS:AD) now earn more than 100 times than most of their employees.
Dijsselbloem said caps in the financial sector and for publicly-funded enterprises had had a beneficial effect an it is "now time that these developments continue through to the private sector."
He did not propose a law change, but said the idea should be taken up by companies as part of good corporate governance and praised institutional investors such as pension fund PGGM for beginning to address the subject.