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Barclays to cut up to 12,000 roles as profits slump

Nick Paler
Written By:
Posted:
11/02/2014
Updated:
05/12/2014

Barclays has said it intends to cut up to 12,000 jobs this year, including 7,000 in the UK, as it reveals it has upped its staff bonus pool despite a drop in profits.

The bank, which has 140,000 staff in total, said it had already told about half of the staff affected.

The job cuts follow a 5% reduction in the workforce in 2013, when it scrapped 7,650 roles.

The details come after Barclays yesterday confirmed its full-year profit figures a day early, following their publication in a corporate diary column.

The bank’s statutory pre-tax profits for 2013 rose to £2.9bn, but adjusted pre-tax profits fell by 32% to £5.2bn.

Barclays said its profits were hit by restructuring of the bank last year, including its withdrawal from certain lines of business. The bank was also hit with a series of fines over the sale of various products, as well as for breaching regulations in different countries.

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Most recently it was fined £2.3m for poor record keeping by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

While moving to cut jobs, Barclays said it had increased the total amount it paid on staff bonuses last year.

The bank’s total bonus pool for 2013 rose by 10% to £2.38bn, from £2.17bn in 2012, with the investment bank’s bonus pool increasing by 13%.

“At Barclays, we believe in paying for performance and paying competitively,” said chief executive Antony Jenkins, who has waived his own annual bonus.

Barclays said the job cuts would hit 820 senior manager roles, of which 220 were managing directors and 600 directors, according to reports.

About 400 of those senior job cuts are from the investment bank.

Barclays said it was hopeful it could achieve the majority of the cuts voluntarily.