Barclays is a bit sorry

There's a slightly odd statement from Barclays today.

It says that "in recognition of the extraordinary circumstances" of the way it raised £5.8bn from a Qatar state investment fund and an Abu Dhabi royal, its executive directors are foregoing all bonuses for 2008 and all board members will offer themselves up for re-election at the annual meeting in April.

And Barclays is offering £500m of reserve capital instruments - which pay a fat 14% interest rate - to (mainly) British shareholders.

But gallingly for UK Investment institutions, they're not being offered any highly valuable and desirable warrants to buy Barclays shares: no warrants are being released by Qatar or Abu Dhabi.

Some will argue therefore that the claw back for British pension funds and other investors of the £500m represents Abu Dhabi and Qatar getting an even better return for taking even less risk.

So Barclays British shareholders will still be feeling miffed.

The background is that many Barclays shareholders are concerned that their bank has given away far too much to Abu Dhabi and Qatar when raising the essential billions from them (and see my previous notes on this saga).

Their complaint is that if Barclays had taken underwriting from British taxpayers, which was offered by the Treasury, the capital could probably have been raised more cheaply and British shareholders could have subscribed for most of it.

The charge against the Barclays board is that for emotional rather than rational reasons it preferred partial nationalisation by a couple of Gulf states to partial nationalisation by HM Treasury.

While not formally admitting they bogged it up, a quartet of Barclays executives have volunteered to do penance by surrendering any entitlement to this year's bonus and living on gruel rations - by their standards - for a year.

For Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays Capitals - the bank's investment bank - this means getting by on basic pay of £250,000 (more or less what the prime minister is paid, including his salary as an MP, allowances and benefits), compared with £21m last year

And then there's the "back us, or sack us" gesture, with Barclays taking the unprecedented step (I think) for a British bank of putting every board member up for re-election.

This is slightly redolent of John Major's decision in the mid 1990's to offer himself up for re-election as leader of the Tory Party, in an attempt to put paid to the rebels who were trying to oust him as premier.

Which may not be a complete coincidence, since Major's main political adviser then was Howell James - who just happens to be Barclays' newish director of comms.

Major of course won that contest, but many would say that he never really regained his authority as prime minister.

Does the same fate await Barclays directors, and its chairman, Marcus Agius, in particular?

That rather depends on how the bank performs between now and the April vote. And also on whether our government starts to meddle in a way perceived as irksome by the City in the affairs of those banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland that are taking capital from taxpayers.

It is inconceivable that the entire Barclays' board will be sacked, but the judgement of executives and non-executives has been called into question.