Luxembourg Central Bank president in the lower salary ranks

(ndp/sth) Press agency Bloomberg has compiled a list of central-banker salaries across the euro area. The list is headed by Belgium's central bank governor Jan Smets who earns a salary of some 480.000 euros per year, closely followed by Italian central bank president Ignazio Visco (450.000 euros).

Another Italian, Mario Draghi, who heads the European Central Bank's Governing Council, finds himself only in fourth place with 386,000 euros per year.

Luxembourg, despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the list, rewards its central bank governor with a comparatively "low" income. President Gaston Reinesch had an income of 181.000 euros in 2015, putting him in 14th place of the list.

Other countries such as Germany (Jens Weidemann, 440,000 euros) and the Netherlands (Klaas Knot, 380,000 euros) see themselves in third and fifth place respectively.

Taking a look beyond the euro area, some other numbers can be surprising. The governor of the Bank of England earns around 975,000 euros, while his US-colleague, arguably the most influential central-banker in the world, merely earned 180,000 euros in the past year. Thomas Jordan, President of the Swiss national bank SNB on the other hand leads the international ranking with a yearly income of approximately 1 million euros.

The incomes of these central-bankers still pale in comparison with the executives of the banks they oversee. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer John Cryan made 1.9 million euros last year, his colleague over at BNP Paribas SA, Jean-Laurent Bonnafe even saw himself awarded a nice compensation package of 3.5 million euros in the same period.