Barclays freezes ex-boss's bonus amid Epstein links

Barclays has suspended millions of pounds in bonus share awards to former boss Jes Staley amid an investigation by regulators into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr Staley left the bank last November after watchdogs began a probe into his links to the dead sex trafficker.

Mr Staley is contesting the City regulators' findings.

But Barclays has announced that in the meantime it is freezing long-term bonus and share payments for Mr Staley.

Mr Staley's share awards that have been suspended are worth nearly £22m based on Barclays' share price on Wednesday.

The bank said in a statement: "In line with its normal procedures, the committee exercised its discretion to suspend the vesting of all of Mr Staley's unvested awards, pending further developments in respect of the regulatory and legal proceedings related to the ongoing Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) investigation regarding Mr Staley."

Regulators are investigating whether Mr Staley's relationship with Epstein was closer than he described to the board.

According to Barclays latest annual report, Mr Staley holds 9 million unvested shares - stock that has been promised but not yet paid out - which are subject to performance targets, and an additional 2.1 million shares not subject to targets.

Based on Barclays' latest share price, Mr Staley's package is worth £21.9m.

He also holds an additional 6.7 million shares that he owns outright. These are worth £13.1m.

Barclays revealed the move as it published its full-year results which showed a sharp rise in pre-tax profits to £8.4bn for 2021 compared to £3.1bn the previous year. Barclays' share price rose by 3.3% to 196p in early trading.

Profits were lifted by the release of £700m that Barclays had set aside to cover anticipated losses on Covid loans. That compares to £4.8bn the bank set aside in 2020 for Covid loan losses.

Mr Staley's relationship with Epstein can be traced back to US investment bank JP Morgan where the former Barclays boss used to work and where the sex offender was a client.

Mr Staley has characterised his relationship with Epstein as professional. He said that his contact with Epstein - who took his own life in 2019 - began to "taper off" around 2013 when he left JP Morgan.

Mr Staley had already admitted he maintained contact with Epstein for about seven years after his 2008 conviction for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor.

It is also known that Mr Staley visited Little St James, a retreat owned by Epstein in the US Virgin Islands in 2015, months before taking the top job at Barclays.

The investigation by the FCA and the PRA began in 2019 after JP Morgan handed over 1,200 emails - initially to US regulators - sent between Mr Staley and Epstein mostly around 2008 to 2012, according to the Financial Times.

Regulators were concerned that the emails showed a closer relationship between the two men than was characterised in a previous letter from Barclays which had described it as professional.

Mr Staley resigned late last year after the regulators sent their conclusions of the investigation to Barclays' board.

He said he was "shell-shocked, angry and upset" at the findings and that he would contest them.

At the time, Barclays said: "It should be noted that the investigation makes no findings that Mr Staley saw, or was aware of, any of Epstein's alleged crimes, which was the central question underpinning Barclays' support for Mr Staley following the arrest of Mr Epstein in the summer of 2019."

In its annual report for 2021, Barclays chairman Nigel Higgins praised Mr Staley, stating that the bank's performance for the year "was in no small way a credit to Jes Staley... and the team he assembled".

He said Barclays is "grateful for the hard work that he put in for the company".