I have been working in the bank for more than two years now. Part of our annual bonus is a Staff Stock Issue, a free stock we receive from the bank and opportunity to purchase an extra stock worth of the certain percentage of our annual salary. It would be foolish not to take part in this. Well, not every time it works as easy as it looks.
I took my Staff Stock Issue last year and purchase an additional for the maximum amount I could. Well, the price of the stock was €15 / share. Today, the price of share is €5.75. What a loss. It doesn’t bother me too much, as most of the shares we got free of charge as the bonus from the bank. About two weeks ago, we received our Staff Stock Issue bonus for last year, and again, we have a chance to buy an additional. What bothers me now is that the price has not been set yet. We had to made our decision and respond to the offer without knowing of what the price will we buy the shares at. And that sucks. The bank has been lately dishonest to the staff, and I have a feeling that we will pay more for our additional stock then the market price is. I have emailed the people who deal with this issue, and they replied that the share price will be set on 8th of July when the bank’s Annual General Meeting take place at the headquarters of the bank. This is not what I want to hear, and this really bothers me, beacoause we already had to decide if we want to purchase an additional stock, and now we will wait what price will be set, without a chance to back out if the price will be higher then the market price. That means, we are totally depending on the bank’s decision. And let me tell you, most of the staff does not trust the bank officials any more. No wonder.
There is something peculiar going on in the bank these days. As part of the massive rationalisation programme in the bank in 2005, the bank’s officials signed the agreement providing for a Staff Stock Issue of 6% until 2009. The bank has only offered us a 3%, which is clearly breach of the agreement and the staff, of course, is not happy at all. And so am I. I haven’t pointed out an important fact, that the bank’s annual groups profit this year was almost €1.8 billion, the highest profit ever.
What a rip off.