Sacked, Barclays boss who took too long to cut costs

BARCLAYS yesterday ousted its chief executive of three years with a £2.4million golden parachute only hours before the Chancellor took to his feet to deliver the Budget.

Antony Jenkins was fired by chairman John McFarlane – a gruff Scottish banker nicknamed Mac the Knife for his take-noprisoners attitude – after losing the confidence of the bank’s board.

It was said that he failed to make enough headway cutting down the forest of bureaucracy engulfing Barclays. Nor did he cut costs quickly enough and has struggled to improve the performance at the investment bank.

But the blow will be cushioned by the wealth Mr Jenkins has extracted from the bank, including more than £5million last year and a string of long-term incentives yet to pay out, despite the fact the lender has yet to recover fully from the crisis.

Mr McFarlane told Mr Jenkins of the decision on Friday but denied that Barclays had deliberately put out the news of his departure on Budget day, when all eyes would be on George Osborne. He said the announcement was delayed ‘out of respect’ for Mr Jenkins, who was making a speech in the City on Tuesday evening.

‘We could not hold it any longer than 7am Wednesday morning because I had told executive directors and they might tell their wives, their lovers, whoever,’ said Mr McFarlane. ‘It is amazing it didn’t leak out, even though I read the riot act to people about keeping quiet. I can assure you we did not deliberately do it on Budget Day.’

Despite his denials, it is the sec- ond time in two years that the bank has issued bad news on Budget day. In 2013 it made an announcement that it was showering former investment banking chief Rich Ricci with £17.5million of shares and that Mr Jenkins was receiving £5.3million-worth.

Barclays shares rose strongly after Mr Jenkins’ exit was announced. He had taken over from Bob Diamond, who quit in the wake of the Libor rate-rigging scan- dal, in 2012 vowing to clean up the bank’s culture and repair its relationship with customers and City regulators. It earned him the nickname Saint Antony but his efforts to overhaul the high street lender, which included cutting tens of thousands of jobs, did not progress fast enough.

He was toppled following a board meeting late last month, where non- executives led by veteran industrialist Sir Mike Rake said they wanted him to step aside. Mr McFarlane said: ‘Some very strident voices came forward saying we are very grateful to Antony, but we don’t think he is the right person for the future, we think somebody different is required.’

The chairman will take the reins on his current pay packet of £800,000 until a replacement for Mr Jenkins is found.

Although Barclays has yet to recover fully from the battering it took in the financial crisis, Mr Jenkins will get an exit package consisting of a year’s pay of £1.1million, plus £950,000 of ‘role-based pay’ in shares and a pension allowance of £363,000. He is also in line for payouts over the next three years and holds £14.4million-worth of shares.