Protesters occupied a branch, union bosses railed at bonuses – but the bank’s shares surged

FIGURES FROM Barclays yesterday may have been hard to interpret but there was no mistaking the reaction to them, from the anti-cuts protesters who briefly occupied the Barclays branch in Islington, north London, to bitter accusations from union leaders that “mammoth” bonuses made a mockery of any claims of restraint on pay.

Quite how much a mockery was hard to tell, as new boss Bob Diamond provided a mountain of figures with the bank’s 2010 results but very little clarity, particularly on bonuses.

Of his own windfall, widely expected to be in the region of £8-9 million (€9.5-10.5 million), there was barely a word, except that it would be disclosed next month.

As banking correspondents struggled to understand the underlying performance of the group, the first of the British banks to report, the BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, took to the internet. In his blog, Peston expressed his frustration that he had been refused an interview not just with Diamond but also with chairman Marcus Agius, who also happens to be senior non-executive director at the BBC. No accusations of favouritism there, then.

One of the difficulties with the results was that the previous year’s profit figures had been restated to strip out investment management operation BGI, which was sold in 2009. Thus the record £11.6 billion profit reported a year ago was nowhere to be seen; it had shrivelled to just £4.6 billion. And so the 2010 profit of £6.1 billion reported yesterday was a 32 per cent increase on 2009.

Total staff costs at the group reached almost £12 billion, up by a fifth. But bonuses, the bank insisted, were down, and there were some figures to support this, with the average bonus payment at Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm, falling from £124,000 to £104,000.

At the same time, however, salary rises took the average pay for BarCap’s 24,000 or so staff to £236,000, an increase of anything between 20 per cent and 40 per cent, depending on which figure is used as a comparison.

Meanwhile BarCap’s compensation ratio – the proportion of revenue distributed in pay – jumped from 33 per cent to 43 per cent. The compensation ratio has traditionally been used to track pay trends in investment banking but Barclays now argues that it is no longer relevant because of the growing proportion of deferred bonuses.

Some of the figures need no interpretation – cost savings of the order of £1 billion a year are to be implemented over the next couple of years as Barclays streamlines its operations in an effort to offset the lower returns to be made in its increasingly regulated world. Another figure that’s pretty easy to understand is gross new lending in the UK last year of £36 billion, just £1 billion higher than 2009 despite continued government pressure to lend.

Shares in the bank led the FTSE 100 risers with a jump of 5 per cent. Lloyds Banking Group and RBS also moved ahead, adding almost 2 per cent apiece.

So the first of the banks to report did win some plaudits yesterday, but only in the Square Mile. Its continued reluctance to provide clear guidance on the rewards its bankers receive will have done nothing to restore its reputation or to bring the wider world round to its chief executive’s view that the time for “remorse and apology” for the banks needs to be at an end.

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The dire state of the retail sector has been underlined by figures showing that more than one in seven retail outlets in the UK is now boarded-up. The north of the country is suffering more than the south, with almost two in five shops shuttered in some towns.

According to the Local Data Company, that divide will widen still further as the north bears the brunt of spending cuts.

Local councils can do little to stimulate demand but they can do something to make their high streets look less like ghost towns. Increasingly, boarded-up properties are being turned into “virtual shops” with the installation of fake shop fronts.

In Scotland, West Dunbartonshire Council is spending £20,000 on a pilot scheme which includes a fake butcher’s and a delicatessen. Down south, Medway Council is spending £45,000 on makeovers of derelict shops in towns such as Chatham and Rainham. It’s a shame they can’t provide virtual customers too.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardiannewspaper in London