Barclays chief executive accepts £1.1m bonus

BA R C L AY S BOSS Antony Jenkins has accepted his first annual bonus since taking over but a rise in underlying profits was marred by a fresh £750 million hit from the foreign exchange rate- rigging scandal.

Mr Jenkins took a £1.1m bonus for 2014 after declining the payout in the last two years, taking his total annual package, including long-term and other awards, to £5.5m.

The payout may prove controversial after a year in which Barclays has slashed 14,000 jobs, another 5,000 are to go by 2016, and closed a net 72 branches.

Mr Jenkins said the bank was now stronger than at any time since the financial crisis as it announced a 12% rise in adjusted pre-tax profits to a better-thanexpected £5.5 billion.

But he said the forex scandal continued to “cast a shadow” over the business, though he hoped there would be steps towards resolving it this year.

The latest provision, which takes the bank’s total exposure to £ 1.25bn, helped drag statutory prof its down 21% to £2.26bn.

Mr Jenkins said: “While our work in transforming the bank is not complete, our perfor mance in 2014 gives us confidence that we are on the right track.”

The bottom-line figure was also affected by an extra £200m provision to cover compensation for customers mis-sold PPI, taking the total for the year to £1.27bn and overall to £5.22bn.

There was also a £446m write-off on the sale of Barclays’ Spanish business and a “conser vative and prudent” £ 935m mark-down in the value of a £17b loan book covering various public sector bodies, under n ew accounting methods.

Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins.