Credit crunch? Not for the banker paid £36m by Barclays

Bob Diamond, the US banker who runs Barclays' investment banking arm, has cemented his position as one of the highest paid bosses in a FTSE 100 company after receiving almost £36m last year.

The figure comprises £21m in cash, bonuses and shares in addition to £14.8m from a three-year performance plan.

The £21m includes his £250,000 base salary, £6.5m cash bonus, a £11.3m share award held in a trust for three years and £3m of shares which will be received in three years provided performance criteria are achieved. The sum is down slightly from the £22m in 2006.

But his total is boosted by the £14.8m "retained incentive opportunity" - half in cash, half in shares - put in place three years ago when he joined the Barclays board. He received the sum because profits at the investment banking division Barclays Capital exceeded targets - despite the US sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Diamond is one of the highest profile bankers in the City and last year topped the Guardian's annual boardroom pay survey. He came out ahead of Bart Becht, £22m boss of Cillit Bang maker Reckitt Benckiser, and Giles Thorley, of Punch Taverns, who earned £11m in 2006.

Diamond achieved the bonus even though Barclays took a £1.6bn hit from the sub-prime crisis in the US and despite ongoing financial woes which have seen billions wiped off share values worldwide. The bank's profits in 2007 were £7bn,.....continued below

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the same as 2006, and its share price has suffered. The shares Diamond already owns have fallen by £25m during 2007to £51m.

A Barclays spokesman said: "This is a clear illustration that Bob's incentives are clearly aligned with those of shareholders." The Chelsea supporter is now planning to spend more time in the US, capitalising on problems suffered by Wall Street banks by expanding Barclays Capital there.

His pay had been a secret until he joined the board. City rules then required it to be outlined in the annual report. The report published yesterday also exposed the pay to bankers working on takeovers. Barclays paid one former director £600,000 a month during the bank's ill-fated bid for Dutch rival ABN Amro. Naguib Kheraj received the sum, plus £14,178 a month in benefits, from May to December 2007 for a "corporate finance advisory role". The £4.9m he received was in addition to the £657,000 he was paid to the end of April while he helped his successor settle in.

A Barclays spokesman said the sum for Kheraj was "very much in line with the benchmark" in that area. Both men earned more than John Varley, the Barclays chief executive, whose salary and bonus was £2.4m, before £1.8m in share awards.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008