Barclays has revealed a leap in annual profits to £8.4bn and that share awards currently worth around £19m to former chief executive Jes Staley have been frozen, as he contests the findings of a regulatory probe into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The bank confirmed a story by Sky News on Tuesday when it said the board had decided against allowing long-term share awards to vest as scheduled but did not rule out granting the awards in future.

Mr Staley quit Barclays in November last year after he and the bank were made aware of the preliminary conclusions of the investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA).

It examined how Mr Staley had characterised his historic business relationship with Epstein to Barclays from the time he ran the private banking arm at JP Morgan.

The investigation, which was launched after Epstein’s death while awaiting trial in 2019, made no findings that Mr Staley saw, or was aware of, any of Epstein’s sex crimes, Barclays said last year.

The bank said on Wednesday that its annual results could be credited to Mr Staley’s tenure.

Profits almost trebled when compared to the £3.1bn achieved in 2020.

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The performance was driven by lower bad loan charges and a strong performance from its investment banking arm.

Barclays revealed a bonus pool of £1.9bn and said it would buy back one billion pounds of its own shares and increase its full-year dividend to 4p-per-share.

Mr Staley was succeeded by C.S. Venkatakrishnan – known as Venkat – who signalled at that time that he backed his predecessor’s strategy.

Barclays confirmed its long-standing chief financial officer Tushar Morzaria had decided to retire, with his deputy Anna Cross set to take on the role from April.

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