High Pay Centre report on executive pay

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• Chief Executive pay at Britain’s largest companies grew
  six times faster than the wider workforce from 2016 to
  2017, a review by The High Pay Centre has found.
• Median pay of bosses rose 11% to £3.9 million while the
  salaries of employees struggled to keep up with inflation, the
  study found.
• It revealed that an employee on a median salary of
  £23,474 would have to work 167 years to make the same amount
  that a FTSE 100 boss on median pay makes in a year

Chief executive pay at Britain’s largest listed companies grew
six times faster than the salaries of the wider workforce, as pay
for an average FTSE 100 CEO rose to £3.9 million ($5 million per
year).

CEO median pay rose 11% among FTSE 100 bosses in 2017 as
remuneration for the rest of the workforce went up by just 1.7%,

an annual review by The High Pay Centre has found.

The report revealed that an employee on a median salary of
£23,474 would have to work 167 years to make the same amount that
a FTSE 100 boss on median pay makes in a year, up from 153 years
in 2016.

The CEO’s with the largest pay were Simon Peckham, the boss of
corporate turnaround firm Melrose at £42.8 million per year, and
Jeff Fairburn of housing and construction firm Persimmon at £47.1
million, more than 20 times his pay in 2016.

The review’s median figures give an accurate representation of
pay for the middle-of-the road worker and CEO without the risk of
being skewed by large and small anomalies at either end of the
scale as averages can be.

When calculated by averages the figures are higher still, showing
a 23% increase in CEO pay from 2016 to 2017. 

“Investors have repeatedly highlighted their concerns with
excessive CEO pay, so it is frustrating that the message does not
appear to be getting through to some FTSE 100 boardrooms,” Andrew
Ninian, director of stewardship and corporate governance at the
Investment Association told The Guardian.

This year we have seen more FTSE 100 companies get significant
votes against their remuneration reports than in previous years,”
he added.

The report which was put together by Chartered Institute of
Personnel and Development comes after
statistics released on Tuesday showed that wage growth in
Britain slowed to its weakest rate in 43 years.

Chair of UK Parliament’s House of Commons business committee,
Rachel Reeves, said that “Excessive executive pay undermines
public trust in business. When CEOs are happily banking
ever-larger bonuses while average worker pay is squeezed, then
something is going very wrong.”