£178m

What bosses at Big 4 banks earned after the crash

THE bosses of Britain’s four biggest banks have pocketed almost £178m since the financial crisis struck – while average wages have fallen by £760 a year.

Vast payouts to the chief executives of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland have continued despite bailouts, mis-selling scandals and massive fines.

Meanwhile a report by the Institute For Fiscal Studies shows the typical worker is still earning significantly less.

Its analysis shows that average annual earnings stood at £23,327 last year, 3.2pc lower than in 2008 when the average wage was £24,088. It is likely to fuel fresh criticism of the industry and spark fears that ordinary families have shouldered the burden of the crisis while City chiefs have sailed on regardless.

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, said: ‘These figures show there is one rule for the bankers and another rule for the rest of the country. Let’s not forget that taxpayers bailed them out and saved their skins. This is greed, not performance-related pay.’

Luke Hildyard of the High Pay Centre said: ‘Britain is an angrier, more divided country in the aftermath of the crisis, and the contrasting experiences of the top bankers who caused it and the blameless majority of people explain why.’

Analysis by the Mail reveals that HSBC has been responsible for the most generous pay packets, doling out £ 65.8m to bosses Michael Geoghegan and Stuart Gulliver from 2009 to 2017.

The bank came through the crisis is relatively good shape financially, but was hit with a £1.5bn fine in 2012 for laundering money on behalf of Mexican drug cartels and threatened with losing its US banking licence.

Lloyds has paid its chief executives £49.6m since the crisis, when it was forced to accept £20.3bn of taxpayers’ cash to stay afloat.

This cash has since been repaid, but the bank was the biggest culprit of the huge PPI mis-selling scandal and has shelled out £18.7bn in compensation.

Current boss Antonio Horta- Osorio, who was caught in 2016 having an affair on a business trip, has been handed £45.1m.

At Barclays, bosses have picked up £39.3m.

The bank avoided a bailout after securing £ 2.3bn of investment from Qatar in a deal for which it is now being prosecuted by the fraud squad. Then-boss John Varley, who earned £6.6m after the crisis, is also due to go on trial along with three other former executives. They all deny wrongdoing, as does the bank. Barclays was later at the centre of the Libor rate-rigging scandal, for which it was fined a thenrecord £290m. The scandal led to the resignation of Varley’s successor as chief executive Bob Diamond ( pictured), who was paid a total of £13m. Current chief executive Jes Staley has earned £8.4m but was forced to hand back a £500,000 bonus and fined £642,430 after wrongly trying to unmask a whistleblower who had written a poison pen letter about one of his staff. The last of the big four banks, Natwest owner RBS, has given its bosses £22.8m despite a £ 46bn bailout which has left taxpayers with a 62.4pc stake they are almost certain to lose money on.