Barclays freezes ex-boss Staley’s bonus until Epstein dispute resolution

Barclays has frozen all scheduled bonus payments to its former boss Jes Staley until a dispute between he and Britain’s financial regulators over the way he characterised his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is resolved.

The high street lender said today all bonus payments, which amount to around 70 per cent of Staley’s total pay since he joined the bank, will stop.

However, Staley did receive over £2m in fixed pay last year.

Staley quit as the bank’s chief last November after he and the board were shown the preliminary findings of a Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority probe into the way he characterised his relationship with Epstein to the board, who then subsequently relayed that information onto the regulators.

C.S. Venkatakrishnan, a former c-suite employee at Barclays and nick-named Venkat, was then parachuted in to take the reins at the high street lender.

The announcement was made alongside the lender’s full-year results, the first headed by Venkat, which revealed its profits swung back sharply last year from the depths of the Covid-19 crisis.

Barclays raked in £8.4bn in profits for the whole of last year, more than double from the £3.1bn registered in 2020.

Barclays was the top performer on the FTSE 100 during afternoon trading, with its shares up over six per cent.

A £700m release of reserves set aside to cope with an expected wave of defaults triggered by the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 crisis boosted the lender’s performance.

The better than expected profit haul led Barclays to announce a £1bn share buy back and 4p per share full-year dividend.

The bumper profit take prompted Barclays to expand its bonus pool for its top dealmakers 23 per cent, sending it to nearly £2bn.

Barclays’ decision to scale up remuneration follows steps taken by the UK’s other top banks.

NatWest, HSBC and Standard Chartered have announced an expansion in the pool of profits to be distributed to top staff.

The UK’s largest mortgage lender Lloyds caps off banks’ earnings season tomorrow and is also expected to announce a rebound in profits and an expansion in the bonus pool.