Barclays shareholders revolt with a quarter voting against executive pay deals
Barclays chairman Marcus Agius (pictured) has apologised to shareholders for badly communicating its pay policy to them, and promised higher dividends in future in an attempt to take the sting out of a row over the bank’s remuneration policy.
More than a quarter of shareholders voted against remuneration packages including a multi-million pound deal for chief executive Bob Diamond.
“There is a significant minority of shareholders who feel that we got some of these judgments (on remuneration) wrong for 2011 and that we have not sufficiently taken their views on board,” Agius said on Friday at the bank’s annual meeting.
Barclays did not communicate its case well enough, he said.
“For this I apologise and I assure you that in the future we will be engaging differently and more purposefully with shareholders in order to ensure that we obtain a broader level of support on remuneration policy and practice.”
Agius said that as profit rose, the bank expected to “materially” increase the dividend shareholders receive.