Leading investors in Barclays are demanding that the bank takes steps to dock executive bonuses over the trading gaffe that it said this week would cost it £450m.
Sky News has learnt that a number of top investors want the British lender to claw back or cancel bonuses awarded to outgoing finance chief Tushar Morzaria in the wake of the error.
Barclays informed the stock market on Monday that it had accidentally breached limits on the level of structured retail products it issued under US rules, meaning it would have to repurchase $15bn of them at their original price.
The mistake will cost the bank hundreds of millions of pounds, and has reinforced its reputation as an accident-prone company that remains in need of a sharper focus on risk management.
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At its annual results in February, Barclays confirmed that Mr Morzaria would step down as its finance chief after more than eight years.
He earned more than £5m in 2021, including £1.5m in the form of a deferred annual bonus.
Leading shareholders now intend to press Barclays to cancel at least part of that award or to claw back part of previous bonuses in order to demonstrate accountability at the top of the bank.
It was unclear on Friday whether Legal & General Investment Management, one of the UK stock market’s biggest investors, was among those who would press for bonus clawbacks at Barclays.
LGIM’s parent company, Legal & General, last month named Mr Morzaria as a non-executive director.
Barclays has frozen millions of pounds in share awards to its former chief executive, Jes Staley, who is appealing against regulators’ findings from a probe into his characterisation of his relationship with the paedophile ex-financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Barclays declined to comment.
