Barclays halves bonus payouts for top executives
Barclays has slashed the payouts to its top bosses by half, yesterday revealing that the group of executives at the head of the bank received £16.5m in shares for deferred bonuses and new awards.
That is a dramatic fall from £31.8m a year earlier, reflecting both the increased crackdown on payouts, and a shift away from investment banking and towards retail banking.
The highest paid on the list of 11 was investment banking boss Tom King, who received shares worth £4.7m. He had to sell half of those immediately to pay the tax bill, amounting to £2.28m.
He just pipped chief executive Antony Jenkins, who came in second place with 1.7m shares, worth a total of £4.3m.
Jenkins took his first bonus during his tenure as chief exec this year, but the share payouts reflect awards given over the past five years.
Before taking the top role, Jenkins was head of Barclays’ retail and business banking arm.
Jenkins has warned that cutting investment banking pay too hard risks driving top performers out of the bank and towards rivals. But this fall in bosses’ pay indicates he is keen to set a more austere tone from the top.
Much of his tenure as chief executive has revolved around moving the bank away from the investment banking-driven growth of the Bob Diamond years, and towards a more retail-friendly model.
That began when Jenkins took a salary of £1.1m, down 26 per cent from his predecessor’s earnings.
And the group of top managers is also changing in composition. Last year, the top two earners were investment bankers – US boss Skip McGee, who received stock worth £8.9m, and investment bank boss Eric Bommensath, who took £8.6m.
The pair have both left the bank, and have not been replaced at the senior level by anybody earning anything like that amount. When King rose to the top of the investment bank, his awards rose from £3.8m to £4.7m.
However, some of the bosses have seen their pay rise substantially.
Retail and business banking boss Ashok Vaswani’s awards increased from £834,000 last year to £1.5m this time around.