Clydesdale Bank chief executive David Duffy earned more than £2 million in his first full year at the helm.

Mr Duffy, who joined in June 2015, led CYBG, the holding company,  to a £1.6 billion flotation in February following its demerger from National Australia Group.

His remuneration included a bonus of £800,000, pension allowances of £180,000 and £67,000 in other benefits.

Mr Duffy is negotiating a possible deal with Royal Bank of Scotland to acquire the 300 branches which have been parcelled up as Williams & Glyn. RBS was due to offload the branches by the end of this year.

A deal could give CYBG an advantage over other challenger banks, including Virgin Money and Metro Bank.

CYBG has almost 3m customers, including a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Adding W&G, which also has about 200,000 SME clients among its 1.8m customers, would make CYBG by far the biggest challenger bank, and boost its balance sheet to nearly £60bn.