Barclays confirms £500,000 pay-out to former boss amid falling profits

Barclays confirmed it awarded sacked boss Antony Jenkins a half-a-million-pound bonus as it revealed falling profits after more mis-selling charges.

The high street lender awarded the ex-chief executive an annual bonus of £505,000 in a total package worth £3.4 million for 2015.

Confirmation of the pay-out came as it said underlying pre-tax profits fell 2% to £5.4 billion for 2015 as it took a further £1.45 billion charge for payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling.

Shares in the bank plunged as much as 11% - seeing trading in the stock temporarily suspended for the second time in less than a month - on news that it would slash the total dividend payment from 6.5p in 2015 to 3p for the next two years.

It also announced a major group-wide shake-up, splitting the bank into two divisions - Barclays UK and Barclays Corporate and International - and selling down its 62.3% stake in its Africa business over the next two to three years.

The bank said it awarded staff bonuses - including other incentives - of £1.7 billion for 2015, down from £1.9 billion the year before.

This included £976 million in bonuses across its investment banking business, down from £1 billion in 2014.

But it said £661 million of bonuses for 2015 across the group were deferred, while the investment bank deferred £579 million of its awards for the year.

Barclays said it was splitting the group into two divisions as part of ring-fencing rules to separate riskier investment banking from retail banking in order to protect public savings in the event of another financial crash.

Jes Staley, who replaced Mr Jenkins at the helm in December, insisted the bank's performance in 2015 showed Barclays "is fundamentally on the right path, and is, at its core, a very good business".