[Photo: by Debra Hurford Brown/Barclays/PA]

Barclays CEO Jes Staley received a bonus of $1.6 million for his first year in charge after hitting almost two-thirds of his targets, as he reshaped the bank and disposed of unwanted assets. The bonus amounted to 60% of his maximum bonus opportunity for the year, giving him a total pay package worth $5.2 million including salary and other benefits.

Barclays, the U.K.’s most high-profile investment bank, has to strike a balance between paying its advisory and trading staff enough to prevent them defecting to rivals, while not attracting the ire of regulators and politicians, whose memories of bank bailouts have not faded.

“Jes Staley has demonstrated strong leadership, strengthened the management team and has instilled a more effective performance ethic and culture within the organization,” the remuneration committee wrote in the annual report.

Earlier in the day, it was reported that Barclays cut the bonus pool for its investment bank by a similar amount to last year’s decline - when it was reduced 7%. While the bank didn’t break out that change in its annual report, across the lender, the overall bonus pool declined 1% percent to just around $1.85 billion.

Barclays said in its annual report Thursday that it changed its bonus deferral policy to pay more cash up front, aiming to improve “the link between in-year performance costs and the size of the incentive pool.” Vice-Chairman Gerry Grimstone had previously said he favors withholding bonuses paid in stock for up to a decade.