Bentley in Belgravia shows Greece is good for buyout CEO

By Kiel Porter, Aaron Kirchfeld & Marcus Bensasson

Few financiers in London covet a job with a government-owned Greek bank. A glimpse of Pavlos Stellakis’s Bentley or his townhouse in Belgravia might have changed their minds.

For more than a decade, Stellakis has presided over a private-equity business for Greece’s oldest and largest lender. While the bank and the country’s economy spiraled toward collapse, he prospered. National Bank of Greece SA received its first state rescue in 2009, the same year Stellakis was awarded a $3.8 million bonus. Since 2010, he has earned at least 60 percent more annually in salary than the bank’s chief executive officer, according to company documents. The funds he oversees have underperformed most peers and delivered few profits, the documents show.

Greek taxpayers, who own 57 percent of Athens-based National Bank after its 8.5 billion-euro ($11.5 billion) bailout last year, have no say in Stellakis’s compensation, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Instead of being determined by the bank, it’s set by a three-person committee at NBGI Private Equity Ltd. that includes Stellakis himself, according to the company’s website.

“At a time when people’s wages and pensions are being cut, for executives at banks that are being supported by public funds to be paid so much is wrong and it shouldn’t happen,” Louka Katseli, who was Greece’s economy minister when the nation received its first international bailout in 2010, said, speaking generally and not specifically about Stellakis.

Belgravia townhouse

Stellakis, who is chairman and CEO of NBGI, paid 8.4 million pounds ($14.2 million) in 2009 for a six-bedroom townhouse in London’s Belgravia district, a block from...