Barclays director lands £14.8m bonus

Bob Diamond, the US-born banker who is on the board of Barclays, is to receive a £14.8m bonus this year even though the investment banking division he runs has forced the group to take a £1.6bn hit from the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US.

Diamond is receiving the payout because of a three-year bonus scheme that ran its course at the end of 2007. Profits for the bank published yesterday show that he has achieved the terms of the deal although confirmation will not come until the annual report later this year.

Barclays shares jumped 17p to 477p on relief that its write-down on investments related to the sub-prime crisis has not risen much above the £1.3bn flagged late last year and the confidence displayed by the bank's management through a 10% rise in the dividend to 34p. Pre-tax profits for 2007 were £7.08bn, down on the £7.14bn of 2006 but a little higher than forecasts.

Diamond, who is steering Barclays Capital on an expansion course in the US, said the pay deal kicked in if he and other unnamed members of the scheme managed to "grow profits from £1bn to £2bn in under four years. We did it in three."

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About 1,400 jobs have gone in the UK bank this year but Frits Seegers, head of the global retail and commercial banking arm, said that an "incredible amount of jobs" will be created this year when the bank plans to roll out a new range of products aimed at the "mass affluent" in the UK...

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