CS Venkatakrishnan, chief executive of Barclays, could see maximum salaries rise by 45 per cent to £14.3 million under an overhaul being considered by the lender’s board.
The proposal would reduce his fixed salary by almost half, from £2.95m to £1.59m, but allow him to earn annual and long-term bonuses worth eight times that new figure.
If approved, this would increase the Barclays boss’s maximum salary package from £9.8m to £14.3m. However, the bank will require a much higher “tangible return on equity” – a key measure of profitability – than its current targets to trigger the higher payouts.
Barclays has reportedly approached its largest shareholders about shaking up the pay structures of both Venkatakrishnan and chief financial officer Anna Cross. The bank’s compensation committee is expected to outline any formal plans in its annual report on February 13, along with a full-year earnings release, and then put those plans to a shareholder vote.
The move comes amid a shift away from the EU’s bonus cap, which once rewarded banks for double a banker’s salary. UK regulators scrapped the cap in late 2023 to boost the city’s global competitiveness after Brexit, and Barclays was the first major bank to lift the cap for senior staff last year.
Last year, an unnamed institutional investor was said to have urged Barclays to cut fixed salaries for executives rather than simply scrap the bonus cap. In response, the proposed revamp would likely tie variable compensation more closely to performance, while still providing senior employees with a higher top-up bonus.
A Barclays spokeswoman confirmed that the remuneration committee regularly consults stakeholders and stressed that whether or not changes are introduced, any updated policy “will continue to focus on rewarding sustainable performance, and closely aligning with shareholders’ interests.”