Barclays Bank will end the sponsorship deal for Boris Johnson’s flagship bicycle hire scheme in 2015.

Barclays, one of the UK’s biggest retail banks, will deliver only half the £50m ($82m) that the full eight year deal would have brought in.

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The banks’ logo has covered thousand of "Boris bikes" since the beginning of the scheme in July 2010, attracting criticism for the modest return for London in exchange for widespread branding for Barclays.

The initial contract was due to end in 2015, but a further deal in 2011 extended it to 2018.

Barclays said that its decision is part of a wider review of commercial partnerships, most of them established by its former chief executive, Bob Diamond.

The decision was communicated to Andrew Gilligan, London’s cycling commissioner, in November 2013 and since then the bank and Transport for London (TfL) have been conducting confidential talks.

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Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the London Assembly’s Liberal Democrat group, said: "Fundamental questions have to be asked as to how such a one-sided deal was ever struck between Transport for London and Barclays."

Graeme Craig, TfL’s director of commercial development, said: "Barclays has not pulled out of the cycle hire sponsorship deal.

"After the current sponsorship deal with Barclays ends-in two years’ time-the cycle sponsorship portfolio will fundamentally change".

Barclay will be honouring the terms of the contract until August 2015; at the moment it is not known who will be the new sponsor of the scheme.

 

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