Barclays’ boss receives £6.5m bonus

However, the bonus, confirmed by Barclays in its remuneration report, is below the £9m Mr Diamond was reportedly in line to receive and includes no up-front cash.

The announcement comes weeks after the UK’s biggest banks agreed to rein in bonuses and lend £190 billion to businesses this year at the end of the so-called Project Merlin talks with the Government.

Mr Diamond, who took up the top post in January, received £250,000 base salary last year, which means his total pay package overtook his peer at HSBC, Stuart Gulliver, who received combined pay of £6.2 million, including bonus.

In line with the Project Merlin agreements, Barclays published details of its top five highest paid senior executive officers, excluding directors such as Mr Diamond.

Siobhan Kennedy says Diamond’s bonus completely undermines Merlin.

The really shocking thing revealed in Barclays' remuneration report today was not actually the size of Bob Diamond's bonus, shocking as the £6.5 million figure turned out to be in an era of so-called restraint. It was all the other line items – the ones in very small print – throughout the report which together boosted his overall package to over £14 million. No wonder Barclays was keen to have the bonus figure made public.

For those who didn't have time to sift through the document, let me spare you the pain and tell you that on top of his bonus reward, Mr Diamond received a £250,000 annual salary, £268,000 in pension contributions and other benefits, such as healthcare. And – here’s the big one – £2.1 million worth of shares from deferred bonus awards which amounted to a cash handout of £7.63 million pounds. Not to forget, of course, the £2.25 million long-term incentive payment which Barclays insists can not be counted in this year's package. Even leaving that aside, Mr Diamond still walks away with a seriously hefty sum which makes a mockery of the Merlin agreement between the Treasury and the banks. Under it, the banks promised to show restraint but surely no-one could argue paying a chief executive £14.6 million is somehow reigning in the excesses. There's evidence of the "old ways" in other parts of the bank too. Barclay's disclosed for the first time the pay of its five top bankers and at least three of them received a bigger bonus than Diamond himself. Two of them – names nor job titles included of course – were paid over £10 million and the third received nearly £8 million. Again, that’s just their bonus. Heaven knows what their total remuneration packages look like.

The novelist Tom Wolfe coined the term "masters of the universe" from the cartoon series He-Man to describe the over-inflated view bankers have of themselves. We've seen the destructive force those superhuman powers can have. Yet, just three years after the biggest financial downturn the world has ever known, those Masters of the Universe seem once again to believe they have all the power.

The report also confirmed John Varley, Mr Diamond’s predecessor, was awarded a £2.2 million bonus on top of his £1.65 million salary.

Mr Diamond, who recently told MPs that the time for “remorse and apology” in relation to the banking crisis needed to be over, was previously chief executive of Barclays Capital, the bank’s investment banking arm, before taking over from John Varley at the start of 2011.

Barclays previously revealed that total staff costs jumped by a fifth to almost £12 billion last year, despite a 12 per cent cut in its bonus pool for investment bankers.

In a year when pre-tax profits rose 32 per cent to £6.1 billion, Barclays added that the group-wide pot for performance-related awards fell 7 per cent to £3.4bn.