Bob Diamond, the Head of Investment Banking for Barclays bank took home a fat pay cheque of ₤21 million pounds, for the year 2007, albeit a shade lower than the year before. Still one of Europe’s highest paid bankers of 2007, Diamond’s salary break up consisted of 6.8 million pounds in cash and shares worth 11.4 million pounds under an executive share award scheme. The scheme requires executives to stay at the bank for at least five years for the full amount.

An additional amount of 3 million pounds could be added on later, according to a performance share plan depending on how well Barclay’s shares perform in the following three years.

Although Bob Diamond’s basic salary has remained at 250,000 pounds for the last eight years, his bonus structure is radically different from the other directors, in keeping with the practice common in investment banking.

In actual figures, Diamond’s salary is down one million pounds since 2006, but the ₤22 million he drew for 2006 was split almost right through the middle in cash and shares. However in 2007, he received almost 64% of his bonus in shares.

Bob Diamond’s salary was a lot higher than even that of Chief Executive John Varley and also that of Frit Seegers who is the head of retail and commercial banking. Bob Diamond is group president and manages the investment banking, wealth management and asset management divisions of Barclays and though his division called Barclays Capital (BarCap) has had decreased profit growth this year, down to 5% from 55% in 2006, BarCap has still managed to rake in nearly a third of the profits Barclays made in 2007.

Barclays’ 2007 pretax profit has hit a plateau at 7.1 billion pounds following a grave loss of 1.6 billion pounds on the value of risky assets and retarded growth due to financial crises. Despite all this, Barclays writedowns was a lot lower than rival banks.

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