Barclays just handed its exec team £13.6m worth of shares in the bank, and there’s the chance they could snap up £9.2m more
Barclays handed 10 of its most senior staff members shares worth £13.6m in the bank today, while also giving them the chance to snap up several million pounds more in years to come.
By comparison, the bank awarded nine people shares worth £8.7m last year. The lender said the boost in this year's award was thanks to a higher share price, which has soared to £2.30 this year, up 40 per cent on £1.65 the year before.
Barclays also revealed directors had been granted rights to potentially pick up shares worth up to £9.2m between them, although these are subject to a deferral period of a minimum of five years as well as a clawback clause.
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Chief executive Jes Staley, who took over the helm of the bank in December 2015, has been granted £117,000 as part of his pay, as well as £81,000 as part of his upfront bonus, after tax and other deductions.
The banking giant revealed last month it had nearly tripled its profits before tax for 2016 to £3.2bn, up from £1.1bn in 2015.
Despite this, it also revealed it had trimmed one per cent off of its bonus pool for its bankers, reducing it to £1.5bn. The lender has made considerable efforts to slash how much it shells out in incentive pay in recent years, with 2016's bonus pool coming in at 56 per cent lower than 2010's, when it stood at £3.5bn.
City PM reported last month that, while bankers hired by UK institutions were having their bonuses squeezed, those on the payroll of their US-headquartered counterparts were enjoying fatter backpockets.
While bonus pools at UK banks have slipped five per cent on average compared with the year before, bonuses for relatively junior staff at the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley have shot up as 16 per cent this year, according to salary comparison website Emolument.