Bob Diamond is just finishing up an early morning conference call with reporters taking questions on what the company’s report describes as ’solid’ results, with profits down slightly to about 5.9 billion pounds, in a tough economy. The results are slightly less than expected but not far off the analysts guestimates.
Mr Diamond says he is pleased that business held up well across most of the group, but as expected there was a significant fall at the money being made by the bank’s investment side, the riskier bit, with a drop in profits of 20%. But Mr Diamond was very eager to emphasise what the bank is doing well, ahead of its competitors in lending to small and medium business as promised by the Merlin agreement with the government. And taking on apprentices and helping to tackle youth unemployment, although it’s not entirely clear how he plans to do that. He also had praise for the PM and the Chancellor for concentrating on the deficit, and cutting back public spending. They’ve also increased the dividend they pay out to shareholders.
What he was not remotely keen to talk about his own pay. Yes he told us all about the cap on cash bonuses, at 65 000. The total fall in top executive incentives of 48%, the cut in the overall bonuses of 26%, and significantly a fall for investment bank bonuses of 35%. He acknowledged that banks ‘need to win back trust’. But asked time and again on the call about the plans for his own pay, the same carefully prepared answer time and again, ‘this is about the results, but thank you for the question.’
If indeed his bonuses is in line with the average fall that would see him with a bonus of just under a million pounds. Clearly the bank has little intention of making that figure public today, but analysts and journalists are already busy trying to make a guess.
Tags: Barclays, bob diamond, Bonus, results