Barclays is to pay almost £12 million to poach a top Citigroup executive to head its global consumer bank operations

Barclays said Frederick (Frits) Seegers would become chief executive of global retail and commercial banking - a new position - from July 10. He will also be joining the executive board.

Barclays said it will pay £8.5 million in cash and share awards over the next three years to compensate Mr Seegers for his departure from Citigroup, the world's biggest bank, where he held senior positions over 17 years on four continents.

He will earn a basic salary of £700,000 plus a 2006 bonus of £1.6 million and will be in line for a performance-related bonus of a further £1 million.

The move will take him about 200 metres from Citigroup's London office to Barclays' headquarters in Canary Wharf.

The new position effectively creates a two-line structure below Barclays chief executive John Varley, with Mr Seegers in charge of UK banking, international and Barclaycard businesses and Bob Diamond in charge of Barclays Capital, Barclays Global Investors and Wealth Management.

"It seems they are looking to have the very top people and it signals more of the international focus that Barclays is looking to achieve over the next few years," said David Williams, analyst at Morgan Stanley. Mr Williams said this tied in with the bank's attempts to increase the overseas share of group profits.

Overseas operations have doubled their share of group profits in the last five years to 40 per cent in 2005, and Barclays wants the UK and over-seas profit contributions to be in balance within three years.

The divisions that Mr Seegers will run will represent around 60 per cent of group income.

With growing businesses in areas such as South Africa and Spain, he is expected to align core UK consumer businesses more closely with international operations.

A Dutch national, 47-year-old Mr Seegers was most recently chief executive of Citigroup's global consumer group, responsible for all the bank's retail operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Between 2001 and 2004, he was head of Citigroup's consumer banking in Asia Pacific, and before that he developed the bank's Internet banking.

Citigroup said it expects to name a replacement shortly.