MADRID, Feb 6 (Reuters) - A Madrid court has cut the compensation Santander (SAN.MC) has to pay Italian banker Andrea Orcel by 8 million euros ($8.6 million) to 43.4 million euros in a dispute over the Spanish bank's withdrawal of an offer to make him CEO, a court document showed on Monday.
The court has, however, reiterated in its ruling dated Jan. 20 that the offer letter from Santander to Orcel represented a binding contract.
In one of the banking industry' biggest rows over pay, Orcel and Santander ended up in court after Spain's largest bank dropped plans to make the former UBS (UBSG.S) investment banker its CEO in January 2019.
The latest ruling comes after Santander appealed against a court order to pay him 51.4 million euros and contested that Orcel's job offer letter was a contract.
Santander was not available for comment, while Orcel's lawyer declined to comment.
Orcel had quit his highly paid role at UBS in anticipation of taking up his new position at Santander, giving up sizeable deferred compensation.
When Santander did not ultimately hire him, he had originally sought as much as 112 million euros from Santander for breach of contract.
But once he became CEO of Italian bank UniCredit (CRDI.MI) in 2021, he amended the lawsuit reducing the claim.
In the new ruling, the judges reduced to 2 million euros from 10 million the amount granted to Orcel for moral damages but left the remaining compensation unchanged, the document seen by Reuters said.
"We consider it more proportionate to set the compensation at the amount of 2 million euros (...) after analysing the economic interests, remuneration, risks, responsibilities, expenses, and standard of living of Orcel," the court said in a 30-page document.
The court also took into account that the unemployment situation of Orcel lasted for a relatively long period of time.
($1 = 0.9287 euros)
