Bonus payments to Barclays executives to be deferred

It has been announced recently that the High Street bank Barclays has decided that it will be deferring bonus payments that were to be made to banking executives for up to three years. This means that directors and senior staff at Barclays will have to wait up to three years to get their bonuses, which are likely to be paid in the form of shares that are staggered up until 2013.

According to reports the level of bonuses for the past year has not yet been set by Barclays. The announcement has come just days after the President of the United States, Barack Obama, announced that there would be curbs placed on the size and scope of bonuses paid by banks in the United States. The subject of bank bonuses over the period of the financial crisis has caused great controversy over the past couple of years, although Barclays did not directly receive any taxpayers’ money during the financial crisis.

Over the next few weeks one hundred and thirty thousand employees from Barclays will be told that they will not be receiving their bonuses in the usual way. In March the bank is set to publish details of what bonuses are to be allocated for senior executives. It is likely that staff bonuses will now be built into staff pay deals rather than being one off payments, and will continue to be deferred on an ongoing basis.

Barclays, which is the third biggest UK bank, is said to be going one step further than any regulations that have been imposed by the UK government or the G20 with regards to its decision over staff bonuses, which could be a smart move on the bank’s part given the anger that has been demonstrated over huge bonuses paid to bank executives just a year after the financial system almost collapsed.

Tags: bank bonuses, G20, barclays, United Kingdom, bank executives