Lloyds to reveal £1m payments for over 20 staff

LLOYDS Banking Group is expected to reveal this week that more than 20 of its staff were paid £1 million or more last year.

The figure, to be disclosed in the lender’s annual report, is likely to reignite the controversy over bankers’ pay and comes just weeks after rival Royal Bank of Scotland revealed that it paid more than £1m to 95 employees.

Lloyds – which is 39.2 per cent owned by the taxpayer – has already announced that its staff are to share a £365m bonus pot and that chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio is in line for a £1.5m shares award, despite the bank racking up a £570m loss.

He will receive the bonus once the UK government has sold at least a third of its stake above 61p per share – the average price at which shares were bought during the bank’s 2008 bailout – or if Lloyds’ share price stays above 73.6p for a given period of time.

The group’s report is also expected to contain details of a new long-term bonus scheme for Horta-Osorio, who was paid about £2.5m last year.

A spokeswoman for Lloyds declined to comment on the contents of its annual report, which will be published before Easter.

Unlike rivals that have large investment banking operations, Lloyds is mainly a retail bank. It is thought most of those earning more than £1m work in its small wholesale banking division.

Details on bankers’ pay have emerged because of new guidelines from Business Secretary Vince Cable’s department. As well as the 95 staff at RBS, which is 82 per cent owned by the taxpayer, Barclays has revealed it paid 428 staff more than £1m last year. There were 204 at HSBC and 19 at Santander.

Unions have criticised the “rampant inequality” between salaries for front-line staff and the highest-paid bankers and the row erupted again last week when it emerged that Rich Ricci, the investment banking chief at Barclays, picked up a £17.6m windfall under a share award scheme.

In total, £38.5m worth of shares were awarded to nine directors and senior staff, which were for deferred annual bonus payouts from previous years and long-term incentive schemes.

The timing of the announcement – it came on the same day as the Budget – raised eyebrows, but Barclays said it had planned the release months before Chancellor George Osborne set his date.

Lloyds is being forced to sell more than 630 branches to meet European Union rules on state aid following its £17 billion taxpayer bailout in 2008.

It has agreed a £750m deal with the Co-operative, which last week vowed to press ahead with the transaction despite revealing that its banking arm plunged to a £662m loss last year.

Horta-Osorio insisted earlier this month that Lloyds was “absolutely committed” to the Co-op sale, but the option of a stock market flotation of the branches remained on the table.

The European Union has agreed a pay cap that would restrict bonus payments to one times annual salary, or twice the salary with shareholders’ approval. Banks fear this will force them to raise base salaries and make them uncompetitive against Asian and US firms.