£2bn bonuses for staff at Barclays
BARCLAYS will hand around £3.7billion to staff and shareholders after its annual pre-tax profits surged from £3.1billion to £8.4billion.
The financial services giant attributed its soaring profits to the record year enjoyed by its investment banking arm.
It has benefited from greater mergers and acquisitions activity, an increase in companies wanting to float on stock markets as well as buoyant exchanges.
Barclays said its 2021 profits were also boosted by expected credit losses being lower than predicted, which enabled it to release £700million in rainy day funds it had set aside to cover loans it feared would sour because of the pandemic.
As a result, it has boosted the size of its staff bonus payouts by 23.1 per cent to approximately £2billion.
It said one factor behind higher bonuses is the “competitive market for attracting and retaining talent” and the need to pay staff fairly. Barclays said it will also return £1billion to investors through share buybacks and it quadrupled its full-year dividend to 4p per share, a payout worth £670.3million to shareholders.
CEO CS Venkatakrishnan said a key priority will be building more robust, dependable revenue streams – particularly at its investment bank. He said: “We want to diversify our income to protect earnings, even during weaker periods.”
Elsewhere, challenger lender Metro Bank said full-year pre-tax losses fell from £301.7million to £245.1million as it claimed its turnaround push is working. Metro, which last made a profit in 2018, was in the red again due to the regulatory issues and fines, closing branches and tech write-offs.