Barclays to axe over 3,700 jobs in wake of tumbling profits

New chief executive Antony Jenkins said 1,900 workers in its European retail and business arm would lose their jobs, along with 1,800 staff from its casino investment division.

Barclays bosses want to cut spending by £1.7 billion, but they are still handing out £1.85bn in bonuses.

They claim to want to make a clean break with the bank's dodgy past.

He is also shutting the bank's murky Structured Capital Markets tax advisory division, which has been fingered in "industrial-scale tax avoidance."

Mr Jenkin's six-month plan, dubbed Project Transform, has broken the bank into 75 bits which were then put under the microscope.

Project Transform was also the name of a PFI project to handle rubbish in Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire.

It went up in smoke when its government funding was pulled in 2010.

Barclays's pre-tax profits fell from £5.9bn in 2011 to £246 million in 2012, largely because of the £2.5bn it set aside to cover compensation for mis-sold loan insurance (PPI).

The company said it had already got rid of 1,600 investment bankers this year.

Mr Jenkins, who was appointed in August after Bob Diamond quit after the bank paid £290m to settle allegations that it rigged the Libor inter-bank interest rate, said he was waiving his bonus for 2012.

Unite national officer Dominic Hook said: "The chief executive's promise of a culture shift at the bank is to be welcomed but we need to see more progress to address the gap between the highest paid and the lowest paid staff at Barclays, which is huge.

"It's shocking but true that the starting salary at Barclays is just £13,500 a year, making some workers at the bank eligible to claim tax credits.

"With pay negotiations due to start soon Unite will be expecting the bank to reward its staff fairly for their contribution to the success of the bank."