Barclays becomes latest target of angry shareholders

Barclays Bank was the latest company to be attacked by angry shareholders at its annual general meeting yesterday, when it sought to justify more than £6m in payouts to its directors last year.

Nearly a third of shareholders refused to back the bank's remuneration report, which included a stipulation that Matt Barrett, chief executive, would receive a "golden goodbye" of £5m if he lost his job in the event of the company being taken over. Mr Barrett, who once answered an MPs' committee question on his pay package by saying "I am a bargain", also earned £1.7m last year, 9 per cent less than in 2001, in line with a fall in Barclays' profit.

Nearly all the votes on Mr Barrett's pay and that of the rest of the board were cast before yesterday's meeting, held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London. But some of the 700 attendees took the opportunity to challenge Barclays' directors in person. Jessica Bonner Thomas, a shareholder, complained that the pension Barclays payed its former employees had risen by only 1 per cent last year.

She said to Sir Peter Middleton, the bank's chairman: "Sir Peter, you earn more than £500,000 a year, you haven't a clue. It is a disgrace."

Another shareholder, Frank Gisborn, said: "It seems that the directors have spent the best part of the year considering what kind of remuneration they can pay themselves."

Barclays is one of a long line of companies on the hit list of the National Association of Pension Funds, whose members control about a fifth of the stock market. The organisation, which has been urging members to vote against examples of unjustified corporate greed, objects to Mr Barrett's potential pay-off.

A spokesperson for the NAPF said: "These types of arrangements are potentially payments for failure and we do not think they are in the interest of shareholders."

Elsewhere, Abbey National found itself under fire from shareholders, after the struggling former building society paid directors a total of £8.5m in 2002 – a year when the bank recorded a £1bn loss.

A majority of the 230 Abbey shareholders who attended its meeting voted against the company's remuneration report as a protest at what seemed to be excessive payouts to a group of directors who stepped down last year.

Ian Harley, Abbey's former chief executive, and a handful of other directors shared £4.5m despite being widely censured for overseeing the decline of Britain's sixth-largest bank.

Wembley, the gaming group that used to own the famous football stadium of the same name, was another company to have been censured by shareholder groups. The NAPF raised objections to the fact that two of its directors would receive pay-offs worth two times their salary if they were forced to step down. None the less, at its general meeting, also held yesterday, the company's remuneration report received the support of most shareholders.

The TUC warned that the Anglo-Dutch steel maker Corus would also be heading for a showdown at its general meeting on Tuesday. The body urged shareholders to oppose the company's report on directors' pay.