Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc, the British bank asking investors for 7 billion pounds ($10.5 billion) to shore up capital, won't pay top executives annual bonuses this year following similar moves by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS AG.

Barclays Chief Executive Officer John Varley, investment banking chief Robert Diamond, consumer bank head Frits Seegers and Finance Director Chris Lucas will forgo their 2008 bonuses, the London-based bank said today. Diamond, the bank's top-paid director, got a 6.5 million-pound ($9.75 million) bonus last year as well as his 250,000-pound base salary.

Governments across the world have agreed to bail out financial services companies amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, putting bonuses under heightened scrutiny from lawmakers and taxpayers. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein this week said he would forgo his bonus, while UBS scrapped bonuses for CEO Marcel Rohner and 11 other top executives this month.

``This is the least Barclays can do,'' said Peter Braendle, who helps oversee $48 billion, including Barclays shares, at Swisscanto Asset Management AG in Zurich. ``They should take into account not just what happened this year but what they did to the bank in previous years.''

Barclays Chairman Marcus Agius has sought to avoid the U.K. government's bailout plan, which limits dividends and executive pay, by raising money from sovereign wealth funds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Barclays investors have complained the funding from the Persian Gulf is too costly and will dilute their stakes.

Gulf Funding

Agius met the bank's biggest investors last week. The bank today moved to placate them by offering money managers as much as 500 million pounds of stock reserved for Persian Gulf funds. Barclays also put its whole board up for re-election.

Goldman CEO Blankfein and six deputies this week said they would surrender their year-end awards. Each of the executives receives a salary of $600,000, while Blankfein's bonus totaled $70 million last year. Bonuses on Wall Street typically account for about two-thirds of the firms' total annual compensation. Blankfein yesterday described the decision as ``unavoidable.''

``We're certainly in an industry that's associated with the heart of the problems that are happening in the wider world and that's an association we can't avoid,'' he said at a conference in Washington.

Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann, the highest-paid executive of Germany's top 30 companies, last month agreed to forgo his bonus, along with investment banking chiefs Anshu Jain, Michael Cohrs and members of the bank's management and supervisory boards.

UBS Package

UBS, the Swiss bank that got a $59.2 billion rescue from the state and central bank, said from next year it will be able to claw back bonuses in the years after their award. As much as a third of the bonus will be paid immediately, while the remainder will be put into a participant's account and can be reduced if there is a loss at the division or the whole bank.

More banks should consider changing their pay systems to follow UBS, said Swisscanto's Braendle.

``Companies should take a longer-term approach,'' he said. ``Instead of awarding bonuses on a year-by-year basis.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Elisa Martinuzzi in Milan at emartinuzzi@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 18, 2008 06:20 EST