Last week, rival Barclays said 231 of its top staff were paid 504 million pounds for 2010, representing an average of 2.2 million each.

The world’s top banks have faced persistent public anger over their pay packages, with complaints that taxpayers’ money used to support lenders during the global financial crisis has been used to reward staff with large salaries.

RBS on Thursday said it had paid a total 256 million pounds to leading staff at its Global Banking & Markets (GBM) investment banking arm in 2010.

The 256 million pound figure referred to so-called Code Staff, a term has been used in financial circles to refer to senior executives who regularly take material risks for a bank.

RBS said in its remuneration report that 93 Code Staff had been classified as senior management. Outside senior management ranks, there were a further 230 other employees who were put into the Code Staff category.

RBS said aggregate remuneration for Code Staff at the rest of the group, outside its investment banking arm, was 119 million pounds.

This made a total payment of 375 million pounds for top RBS bankers throughout the group, implying an average pay of 1.2 million pounds per senior banker.

Last week, RBS said its chief executive Stephen Hester could get a total of up to 7.7 million pounds pay under a long-term incentive pay plan.

Hester’s pay drew condemnation from Bob Crow, the chief of Britain’s transport union. Crow called it “a savage kick in the teeth that nails the lie that we are all in this together,” as Britons grapple with below-inflation pay rises and the government’s austerity measures.

RBS was rescued in October 2008 after its finances were stretched by the credit crisis and its part in the acquisition of Dutch bank ABN AMRO in 2007. The British government ended up with a stake of around 83 percent in the company.

The Scottish bank was propped up with a total of some 45 billion pounds of taxpayers’ money, causing the eventual resignation of then chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin.