Salz attacks warped top pay at Barclays Barclays should lower warped pay levels, end the bank's "entitlement culture" and usher in a spirit of "transparency and candour" if it is to win back trust, according to a long-awaited review of the bank's flawed culture and values. Anthony Salz, the City lawyer-turned-Rothschild investment banker who on Wednesday published a 244-page report on Barclays" business practices, said pay levels were one of the most pernicious cultural problems, particularly among a cohort at the helm of the bank that he calls "the top 70." In 2010, it says that top group earned 35 per cent more than the "market benchmark for their positions." Although the pay premium has fallen since, it remains in place and averaged 17 per cent in 2011. Mr Salz said the bank's whole approach to business became twisted over the decade starting in 2000. "Their focus on short-term return on equity and their competitive position led to a vacuum in culture and values," he told the Financial Times. Pay policies reinforced that. Too many senior bankers continued to demand pre-crisis levels of pay, the report says. A few investment bankers seemed to lose a sense of proportion and humility . . . Some bankers have appeared oblivious to reality," it says. In another conclusion on pay, the review says: "Elevated pay levels inevitably distort culture, tending to attract people who measure their personal success principally on compensation . . . Many interviewees [reported] a sense of an entitlement culture. Mr Salz's review, which he describes as setting down a "road map for the future," was commissioned by Barclays last July following the bank's £290m fines over the Libor rate-rigging scandal and the resignations of chairman Marcus Agius, chief executive Bob Diamond and chief operating officer Jerry del Missier that followed. The report - designed to help restore Barclays" tarnished image, following a succession of other scandals - is the result of an exhaustive programme of interviews with 600 staff, investors, customers and regulators over the past nine months. In a generally measured critique of Barclays" way of doing business, Mr Salz came up with 34 recommendations in all, spanning the key areas of pay, governance, and restoring trust. Many of his conclusions urge the bank to be more transparent and candid and one calls for greater board engagement with the business. But some critics, who said many of the recommendations were vague and went over well-covered ground, questioned the value of the exercise. The report cost Barclays £17m - including £1.5m paid to Rothschild in lieu of a fee to Mr Salz. "It is disturbing to see that Barclays needed to pay out $25m of shareholder funds for a report that documented their corrosive culture that put profits over people," said Mark Williams, lecturer in finance at Boston University. Barclays said at the time that it intended to implement the findings of the Salz review in full. One leading investor said: "Barclays has got the rhetoric. It's a question now of how you maintain the momentum behind that.