When funny money isn’t funny

A City banker at Barclays netted £22 million last year

A City banker at Barclays netted £22 million in salary, shares and bonuses last year and owns stock in the group worth nearly £65 million, it has been revealed.

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Bob Diamond, head of investment banking at Barclays, became one of Europe’s highest-paid bankers after receiving the multi-million pound pay package, which dwarfed even chief executive John Varley’s salary and bonus scoop.

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Barclays, which is currently in merger talks with ABN Amro, said in its 2006 annual report that Mr Diamond was paid a basic salary of £250,000, with a £10.4 million cash bonus on top, plus £4.5 million in deferred shares, topped up with £7.7 million in cashed-in shares.

It also emerged that Mr Diamond owns shares in the group worth £64.9 million accumulated over his 11-year tenure at Barclays and is in line for a further bonus of up to £15 million next year, not including the 2.3 million shares he is set to gain in the group as part of an ongoing performance-related deal.

The above piece of nonsense (I mean in the sense of not making sense on any scale, register, or list of values I can find) is taken from here. The explanation given by Barclay’s is that Mr Diamond (the name’s appropriate anyway, is it no’ just? Well no actually, the whole story is not just!) – well anyway, Mr Diamond makes them a lot of money. Oh, that’s all right then. Now I could be accused of the politics of envy, and right enough, I didn’t get £22 million last year. But I can see no valid moral or socially responsible case that can be made to justify such institutionalised inequity. This one man’s salary would build a well equipped if modest sized school. Or is Mr Diamond’s contribution to our society really worth the equivalent of a year’s salary for 1000 trained nurses? And what would even half that salary achieve applied to any number of essential-for-life projects in developing countries?

I’m away to read Amos again – not that I don’t know what he says – I just want to read it out loud and hear him say it, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.’

Then I’m going to read Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount and consider the lilies……..and the birds….and then Luke’s much more in your face version, ‘But woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort.’