Barclays to freeze CEO Staley's £8m a year pay deal
The chair of Barclay's remuneration committee, Crawford Gillies, has briefed investors about plans to keep CEO Jes Staley's salary and incentives unchanged from 2017 to 2019. Currently, shareholders' votes on pay policy are advisory, although increasingly investors have been demanding that pay be held to a binding vote. This week a group led by the Investment Association will submit proposals to ministers urging them to impose an automatic binding vote for companies whose pay deals were voted against by more than a quarter of shareholders a year before. A government consultation into corporate governance closes on Friday.

Barclays is proposing to freeze its chief executive's maximum pay package for the next three years in a bid to avert a repetition of the remuneration rows which dogged one of Britain's biggest lenders.

Sky News has learnt that Crawford Gillies, the board member who chairs Barclays' remuneration committee, outlined plans for a revised pay policy at a meeting with leading investors last week.

Mr Gillies is said to have told the City institutions that the board intended to keep Jes Staley's salary and incentive arrangements unchanged between 2017 and 2019.

Last year, Mr Staley joined Barclays on a deal which saw him receive a base salary of £1.2m, a role-based payment of £1.15m and pension contribution of almost £400,000.

He is also eligible for an annual bonus award of more than £2m and a long-term share award worth a maximum of just over £3m.

Sources say that an aggregate figure of £8.2m was referred to by Mr Gillies as being the maximum potential pay deal for Mr Staley for the next three years.

While still a lavish sum, Barclays hopes the move to freeze its chief executive's maximum payout until 2019 will convince shareholders that it is committed to avoiding further showdowns over remuneration.

A series of ugly revolts at annual shareholder meetings during the tenures of Bob Diamond and Antony Jenkins, Mr Staley's predecessors, tarnished Barclays' reputation in the City and Westminster.

One investor said that Barclays' proposals were "sensible" given the move announced last year to halve the bank's dividend for last year and maintain the lower shareholder payout in 2017.

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Barclays is not expected to increase its overall incentive pool for 2016 from the £1.67m paid out for 2015, according to a large investor in the bank.

Under Mr Staley, Barclays has accelerated the sale and run-down of non-core assets and begun the process of offloading a majority stake in its operations in Africa.

Barclays declined to comment on Sunday.