In Addition to Dollars and Pounds, BarCap Bankers Will Be Pa

Bobby Diamond has a funny way of trying to win the support of his troops.

Soon after he took over as Barclays PLC CEO on the first of the year, he oversaw the sacking of hundreds of BarCap bankers without handing them their year-end bonuses. And now he's proposed to pay bankers in a currency called the CoCo.

To be exact, the CoCo isn't a currency; rather, it's short for contingent convertible bond, and it will be the new way bankers at MD level and above at the British bank will earn part of their daily brown bread.

A CoCo can not be applied to the skin to make it smell like a flower, though it can be converted into equity (shares of stock), and thus it may not look all that different (when the figures are added up and deposited into bankers' bank accounts) than stock grants -- which many other banks are handing out to their employees in order to appear to be tying compensation to long-term performance.

But, of course, neither a share of stock nor a CoCo is cash, and thus neither is as desirable to a banker's wallet as a highly liquid dollar, pound or euro.

Along with the slight shift in pay, Bob mentioned one more thing: that there could be more BarCap job losses -- perhaps as many as 3,000.

(FT via Dealbreaker)

(Related: Barclays Capital Bankers Sacked Without Bonuses)