Shareholders are making bankers pay for the big salaries they once got Since its release on March 9, Barclays has faced a barrage of criticism over the £17.7m package awarded to its chief executive, Bob Diamond. On Thursday, Barclays offered concessions on how Mr Diamond and other senior executives of the bank will be paid in future. Barclays, despite not being a direct recipient of taxpayer funds during the crisis, is not the only lender to have found its managers' pay being placed under an uncomfortable spotlight, as the subject of bankers' bonuses has leapt up the agenda again this year. In February, Royal Bank of Scotland was at the centre of political and media outcry over its decision to award an all-share bonus of nearly £1m to its boss, Stephen Hester. As Barclays has found out more recently, the ensuing storm was impossible to ignore and Mr Hester was forced to agree to give up the bonus as MPs prepared to take the extraordinary step of voting on the payment. Whatever the rights or wrongs, senior bankers have become acutely aware that their pay is now under greater scrutiny than at any previous time. Despite in many cases the financial performance of their institutions rebounding, the mood among investors and the wider world is not yet ready to accept that bonuses should return close to their pre-crisis levels. From the Association of British Insurers to the National Association of Pension Funds, a consensus has become established that a return to old-style pay levels is neither desirable, nor justified. Any suggestion this might be a viewpoint peculiar to the UK was banished this week when shareholders in US bank Citigroup rejected its executive pay plan, with less than half of investors supporting chief executive Vikram Pandit's $15m (£9.4m) pay package. Under the recently-enacted US "Say on Pay" law, the shareholder vote is not legally binding, with the bank issuing a statement saying it would "carefully consider their [shareholders] input as we move forward." However, it would be a brave company that flagrantly ignored the views of so many of its shareholders. This leaves many banks in a difficult position. Most have already overhauled their compensation structure, bringing in new targets designed to more accurately calibrate pay to shareholder returns. On top of this, banks have sought to reduce overall bonus levels to assuage criticism that nothing has changed. The latest round of bonus bashing shows that shareholders and the wider world remains unconvinced that real change has occurred. Clever chief executives would seem to be wise to cut their own pay before their investors do it for them.