Banking group pays £1m or more to 25 staff

The figure, which includes rewards for five employees who picked up in excess of £2m, means there were 769 bank staff in the £1m-plus pay bracket at the five big high street firms last year.

Chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio was paid £2.5m in pay and deferred bonuses last year, and has also received £1.1m in shares from a long-term incentive scheme that will be released in 2016 subject to performance targets.

Despite £570m of losses in 2012, following on from more mammoth provisions relating to mis-sold payment protection insurance, staff still shared a £365m total bonus pot, equivalent to £3,900 per employee.

Barclays has already revealed that it paid 428 staff more than £1m last year, while there were 93 at Royal Bank of Scotland, 204 at HSBC and 19 at Santander.

The disclosures on millionaires’ club pay have emerged because of new guidelines enforced by Vince Cable’s business department.

Lloyds is predominately a retail bank with most of its million-pound bankers working in its small wholesale banking division, which has to compete for staff with big international investment banks.

Lloyds, which is 39 per cent taxpayer owned, said its bonus pool was three per cent lower than in 2011 while the average bonus per employee was the lowest of the main UK banks. The awards represent around two per cent of revenues. Cash bonuses are capped at £2,000, with additional amounts paid in shares and subject to deferral and performance adjustment.

The deferral period for Mr Horta-Osorio’s annual bonus award will be five years and will be subject to additional conditions related to the share price at which the UK Government invested.

Lloyds chairman Win Bischoff said: “Antonio has led the group through a strong year that has put us ahead in the implementation of our strategic plan. I believe this, in part, is a reason for the group being the best-performing stock in the FTSE 100 Index in 2012.”

It also emerged that former chief executive Eric Daniels will have a further chunk of his 2010 bonus clawed back as a result of further recent increases in the group’s compensation bill for mis-sold PPI.