Barclays fighting claims it tried to bury details of a £40m jackpot for nine top executives from public view

Barclays was last night fighting claims it tried to bury details of a £40m jackpot for nine top executives from public view.
Critics lined up to slam the bank for sneaking out details of the share windfalls – which included £17.6m for top casino banker Rich Ricci – just hours after the Chancellor delivered his latest austerity Budget.
Trade unions and campaigners argued it undermined any progress the bank has made this year on being more open about how much it pays its staff.
But Barclays yesterday scoffed at criticism that it was guilty of a classic ‘Jo Moore’ by publishing details of huge long term incentive awards and deferred bonuses just hours.
Jo Moore was an aide in the Labour Party who sent a notorious email to colleagues on September 11, 2001 – the day of the terrorist attacks in the US – saying it was ‘a good day to bury bad news’.
It argued that the timetable to dish out these huge awards was set out 12 months ago, long before the Budget date was set on December 11.
It also said it was governed by strict ‘disclosure and transparency’ rules, set by City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority.
These dictate that the bank has a 48-hour window to disclose pay awards once it has been informed of them by administrators.
In this case Barclays said third party administrators had bought the shares  to hand to the directors on Monday.
The lender was informed of this on Tuesday and then had to disclose the awards to the stockmarket by the end of the next business day – which happened to be Budget day.  
Banking insiders suggested that changing the dates of the awards once the Budget date had been announced in December would have been fraught with legal difficulties.
It may also have opened the lender up to allegations of insider trading, with suspicions that it may have manipulated the date to benefit the recipients of the awards – for example to coincide with a deal which may have driven the share price up.
But critics last night gave all these defences short shrift.
Deborah Hargreaves from the High Pay Centre said: ‘I think they had leeway on when they announced this. They did not have to do it on Budget day.’
She added: ‘To announce such massive share awards with no proper explanation just smacks of hypocrisy.
‘It seems so unbelievably insensitive to ordinary people to do it just hours after the Chancellor has delivered such a grim Budget.’ Martin Wheatley, boss of the new regulator the Financial Conduct Authority, certainly did not help Barclays’ cause when he told journalists yesterday that he was not aware of any rules which would have forced Barclays to disclose details of the pay awards when it did.
But others jumped to the bank’s defence.
Sarah Wilson, from corporate governance consultancy Manifest, said: ‘There are strict timetabling issues which banks have to adhere to.
‘It could have been worse – they could have released the details in the middle of the Chancellor’s speech.’
Instead she criticised the huge scale of the awards, pointing out that Rich Ricci’s £17.6m windfall was six times the median pay package for a boss of a FTSE 100 company.
Barclays has claimed to be at the vanguard of transparency by publishing the number of employees paid more than £1m – 428 – in its annual report this  month. But in another blow Manifest revealed last night it is set to slap the bank with a C-grade for transparency on its pay awards.
Its report, which is expected to be published as early as today, suggests the bank has only made an minor improvement in transparency since last year when it was awarded a D grade.
Shareholders were particularly incensed by Barclays’ decision to hand former chief executive Bob Diamond a £5.75m ‘tax equalisation’ payment for 2011 to cover his US taxes.
Wilson described the bank’s latest report as being ‘light on detail’, including how targets are set for performance related awards.
But she added: ‘It’s a start. Shareholders will want to give Barclays some slack.
‘It’s a massive undertaking to turn Barclays around.
‘We will be looking for more comprehensive disclosure next year.’