Merry Christmas! It's as if the credit crisis never happened. This is what happens when you save an industry from complete collapse and fail to dictate the terms. The only people who are more nauseating than the bank management would be the politicians who allowed this to happen in the first place. Bankers continue to be the protected class on both sides of the pond despite the noise.
Up to 23,000 investment bankers at Barclays have been handed pay rises in the last few days in a move that may inflame the ongoing row about City pay. It comes as the bank revealed that high-profile board director Bob Diamond had sold £5m of shares.
Diamond runs the Barclays Capital investment banking arm which wrote to all staff on Tuesday to inform them of their pay rises. They are being granted just as the government is levying a 50% tax on bonuses. The move is certain to increase tensions with lower paid staff in Barclays' high street operations who represent the majority of staff and are the public face of the bank.
The pay rises, which have been calculated individually depending on grade, are being handed out ahead of what is expected to be one of the most fraught bonus seasons in memory because of the political interest in bankers' pay after the taxpayer bailout. While Barclays did not take government money, unlike Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, it has, along with other banks, benefited from the liquidity pumped into the system by the Bank of England.
