The publication of the 2025 financial statements has, for the first time in such a comprehensive manner, revealed the details of the compensation paid to the executive elite of listed banks and several Tunisian holding companies.
Article 200 of the Commercial Companies Code requires this transparency. A comparative reading of the notes from twelve banks and three major holdings paints a hierarchy of economic power and money, while raising a troubling question about its consistency with the real state of the national economy.
Ranking by amount: Attijari and UIB Lead
In absolute terms, the total compensation of executive teams, including chairmen, CEOs, deputy CEOs, and board members, places two private banks clearly ahead of the others.
Attijari Bank ranks first, with 5.720 million Tunisian dinars (TND) paid to its management during the fiscal year. Its CEO alone received TND 1.962 million, while deputy CEOs collectively earned TND 2.660 million.
Union Internationale de Banques (UIB) follows closely with TND 5.377 million, including TND 2.095 million for the CEO and TND 2.194 million for deputies.
Next comes Poulina Group Holding with TND 8.94 million, although this figure includes the management of a conglomerate with dozens of subsidiaries, making comparisons with a single entity difficult.
Within the banking sector alone, Amen Bank ranks third with TND 4.435 million, ahead of BIAT at TND 3.297 million, Wifak International Bank at TND 3.141 million, UBCI at TND 3.140 million and BT at TND 2.806 million.
Further down the list are BTK with TND 2.117 million, ATB with TND 1.295 million, STB with TND 1.052 million and BTS with TND 0.942 million.
At the bottom are two major public banks, BNA at TND 0.718 million and BH at TND 0.449 million, largely because both were managed in 2025 by interim CEOs, mechanically lowering compensation levels.
Sector analysis: Private banks pay the most
The first clear sectoral conclusion is that private banks compensate their executives far more generously than public banks. Attijari, UIB, Amen, and BIAT, all predominantly privately or foreign-owned, dominate the top rankings.
Public banks such as BNA, STB, and BH lag behind, partly due to transitional governance issues and partly because public-sector pay scales are more tightly regulated.
However, absolute figures do not tell the whole story. When measured against net profits, compensation reveals striking disparities.
BIAT, the country’s most profitable bank with TND 385.264 million in net income, allocates only 0.86% of its profits to management compensation. BNA drops to just 0.26%.
At the opposite end, Wifak International Bank, a relatively small Islamic bank, paid TND 3.141 million to executives despite posting a net profit of only TND 8.528 million, a ratio of 36.8%. More than one-third of its profits went to executive compensation. BTS and BTK follow with ratios around 9%.
These high ratios do not necessarily indicate abuse, smaller banks bear fixed executive costs that limited profits absorb poorly, but they do raise serious questions about efficiency.
The most problematic case remains ATB. The bank paid TND 1.295 million to its executive leadership in 2025 while ending the year with a net loss of TND 30.918 million. Paying management more than one million dinars during a year of heavy losses is precisely the kind of situation that fuels public distrust toward banking governance.
Industrial holdings and special system of family-owned groups
Among holding companies, the logic differs.
One Tech Holding paid about TND 1.569 million to management for a net profit of TND 23.887 million, representing 6.6%, a relatively moderate ratio for a technology holding group. Poulina, with TND 8.94 million in compensation against TND 166.203 million in profit, stands at 5.4%, consistent with its position as the country’s largest private group.
It is within family-owned holdings that the mechanism becomes more specific, and where Telnet and Délice deserve particular attention.
At Telnet, CEO Slim Kallel received TND 226,436 from the parent company, plus an additional TND 442,486 from subsidiaries, bringing his total compensation to TND 638,285.
Part of the actual compensation therefore flows through subsidiaries, outside the immediate scrutiny placed on the listed holding company.
The same mechanism exists within the Poulina ecosystem and characterizes the model of Tunisian family-owned groups, where founding executives accumulate compensation spread across multiple entities within the group structure.
Délice Holding, another flagship family business, illustrates this structure where the line between family wealth and executive compensation becomes blurred. This is not illegal, Article 200 is respected, but dispersing compensation between parent companies and subsidiaries reduces transparency regarding the real earnings of group leaders.
A disconnect with country’s economic reality
The central question remains: are these compensation levels consistent with Tunisia’s economic situation?
In a country where growth remains sluggish, purchasing power continues to erode under persistent inflation, and the minimum wage barely exceeds a few hundred dinars per month, seeing banking executives earning five or six million dinars annually is striking.
The gap is staggering. The annual compensation of Attijari’s CEO alone, nearly two million dinars, represents the equivalent of several hundred years of minimum wage earnings.
When an Islamic bank devotes more than one-third of its profits to executive pay, or when a loss-making bank maintains seven-figure compensation packages, the implicit social contract begins to crack.
The Tunisian banking sector, already criticized for margins considered excessively high, now reveals another point of tension. Increased transparency, which is in itself progress, starkly highlights the disconnect between the prosperity of executives and the struggles faced by the wider population.
The alignment between performance, social responsibility, and compensation is no longer merely a matter of corporate governance. It has become a question of national cohesion.
