Barclays Hands Bosses £40m Share Windfall

Barclays today handed nine top executives a massive share windfall worth more than £40m less than nine months after the bank was fined £290m for its role in the Libor-fixing scandal.

Figures released on Wednesday afternoon showed that Barclays' controversial investment banking chief, Rich Ricci, accounted for almost half of the giant payout, landing shares worth more than £17m.

The share awards will stoke the ongoing row over bankers' pay and are likely to put pressure on Barclays' board, led by the City grandee Sir David Walker, who arrived last autumn with a pledge to overhaul the bank's culture and reputation for lavish pay deals.

Sky News revealed plans for the share awards earlier on Wednesday, the details of which provoked accusations that Barclays was attempting to bury the news on a day when the City was distracted by George Osborne's Budget statement.

The share awards relate to allocations made in previous years as part of deferred long-term incentive plans, and cover the executives on Barclays' board and its top-level management committee.

A Barclays spokesman defended the payouts, saying they were the legacy of previous pay policies.

"The share releases detailed in this announcement include deferred shares awarded from previous years' annual performance bonuses and, in some cases, vesting of historical Long Term Incentive Plans where the agreed performance conditions for vesting have been met.

"As was stated in the 2012 Annual Report published on 8 March, Barclays has revised its remuneration policy and all future incentive awards, short and long-term, will be based on the new principles that have been set out."

The award to Mr Ricci is particularly contentious because he waived a much smaller annual bonus on the day that Barclays settled with UK and US regulators last June over its traders' manipulation of the interbank borrowing rate, Libor.

Mr Jenkins' payout, worth about £5.5m, is also controversial because he has promised to show greater pay restraint.

His share awards do not appear to have been dented by the fact that Barclays has set aside billions of pounds to compensate customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance and interest rate swaps.