Diamond Geezer

Congratulations to Barclays' president, Bob Diamond, who could according to reports earn £42m for his work in 2006.

This gobsmacking amount is even more gobsmacking, when one takes into account that the CEO of Barclays, John Varley, earns a lot less.

Mr Diamond's £42M comes about from the following:

-He earns a paltry £250K
-He has a potential bonus of £10.4m
-Benefits of £17K
-Shares worth £4.5m
-Paper profit of £5.7m from the Barclays Global Investors Executive Option plan, which he exercised last year.

On top of the above, which comes to £20.9m, Barclays have made a further award of 934,516 shares to Mr Diamond; these are worth nearly £7m at current prices.

If his Barclays Capital investment banking operation and other businesses continue the performance of recent years, that could be increased to 2.8 million shares worth £21m, bringing the maximum total earnings from work in 2006 to £41.9m at current prices.

On top of that Mr Diamond could receive a further £14.8m "retention" bonus this year. His total holdings in Barclays shares, through various option plans, amount to nearly £70m.

John Varley earned a paltry £3.2m plus £1.2m in shares in 2006.

It is ironic that Barclays was recently given a public flaying on the BBC programme "Whistleblower", for mis-selling and fraud, and that it is also under fire along with other banks for its excess penalty charges.

Well, look at it this way, they have to make money somehow; otherwise how on earth could they afford to pay Mr Diamond?