Any other business: Bob’s worth more than his rivals put together, but that doesn’t add up to £18 million

Should Bob Diamond of Barclays be paid a whole lot more than Stephen Hester of RBS, António Horta Osório of Lloyds or Stuart Gulliver of HSBC? Arguably he should, for reasons I’ll try to explain, but a group of institutions including Standard Life, Fidelity and Scottish Widows intend to vote against his £17.7 million haul for 2011 at the bank’s AGM in two weeks’ time, and one influential voice, Pensions & Investment Research Consultants, says performance has been so poor that Diamond deserves no bonus at all, ‘indeed the board should be considering clawbacks’.

It’s true that Barclays’ share price stands 20 per cent below where it was when he took the helm in 2011, its dividends are pathetic, and the £5.7 million ‘tax equalisation’ payment in Bob’s bundle, to compensate him for becoming a UK rather than US taxpayer, is especially provocative. But consider this: Diamond is the chief architect of Barclays as it is today, having driven its investment banking arm for many years before he became group chief executive. Being an American himself he has largely Americanised the way Barclays runs, and if he decides to look for another job, not only will every bank on Wall Street make him an offer but Barclays will probably have to head-hunt another expensive Yank to replace him, there being few people in British banking to match his calibre, experience and management grip.

In fact there’s no comparison between Diamond and the recently hired-in Hester and Horta Osório, who each took home a million plus in salary last year but declined their bonuses, and not much with the low-profile HSBC lifer Gulliver, who collected £7.2 million. Bob is a more valuable commodity than the other three put together, and investors should recognise him as such.