UK's Big Four Banks To Award £5 [billion] Bonus Pot

Sky News ^ | 13 February 2016 | Mark Kleinman

[Lorianne]

Britain's four biggest banks are to award bonus payouts worth almost £5bn in the next few weeks even as the share prices of lenders are being hammered by deepening concerns about economic growth.

Sky News can reveal that boardroom pay committees at Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) are finalising plans to announce the bonus pots alongside their annual results.

The overall pot will be lower than the £5.2bn aggregate bonuses for the quartet of banks in 2014, insiders said on Friday.

The biggest payer will be HSBC, which sources said would award bonuses of just under £2.5bn.

HSBC, which is finalising a decision about whether to move its headquarters from London after a ten-month review, is by far the most profitable of the four banks, as well as the largest dividend-payer among them.

City sources said on Friday that its bonus pool, which is still in the process of being rubber-stamped by its remuneration committee, would be slightly lower than the $3.7bn (£2.56bn) handed out for 2014.

At Barclays, which has borne the brunt of shareholder anger over investment banking pay in recent years, bonuses will be down from £1.86bn to approximately £1.75bn, sources said.

Jes Staley, Barclays' new chief executive, is expected to announce a further reshaping of the bank on 1 March, when it will publish its full remuneration report.

Investors will be watching Mr Staley's announcement for the relative balance between payouts to staff and investors after previous controversy over the issue.

[DoughtyOne]