BARCLAYS' investment banking chief Bob Diamond picked up a pay package worth more than £21 million last year, it emerged yesterday.
Diamond's package includes salary and bonuses of £6.75m and shares worth up to £14.4m under two incentive schemes, the bank's annual report revealed.
The package – which came out at just below the £22m he garnered in 2006 – comes as Barclays wrest
led with the impact of the credit crunch during last year.
But the banking giant still posted profits of just over £7 billion despite the impact of a £1.6bn write-down on subprime losses in the crunch.
Diamond's Barclays Capital (BarCap) operation contributed almost a third of the group's overall profits, but earnings growth at the division failed to keep up with the stellar growth of 2006.
Two years ago, BarCap unveiled a 55 per cent rise in profits, but this slowed to 5 per cent growth in 2007.
The annual report showed that Diamond owned or held under option 10.68 million shares in 2007 but these lost more than £24m in value over the course of the year.
Barclays' share price fell by some 30 per cent during 2007 as the credit crunch hit banking stocks, and the company also failed in a bid to merge with Dutch bank ABN Amro, losing out to a rival Royal Bank of Scotland-led consortium.
Diamond joined the bank from the US. His level of pay only became public when he joined the bank's board in 2005.
Although his basic salary is "just" £250,000, his overall pay and incentives are based on investment banking and far outstrip Barclays' chief executive John Varley.
Varley's overall package of salary, bonuses and shares could reach £4.2m, down from £4.4m in 2006.
Frits Seegers, head of retail and commercial banking, could receive salary, bonus and share awards worth up to £4.4m, up from £3.2m in 2006.
The full article contains 325 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
