Pay for chief executives at Britain’s biggest listed companies rose more than six times faster than wages in the wider workforce last year as the average boss’s pay packet hit £3.9m.
Chief executive pay at businesses on the FTSE 100 index surged 11% on a median basis in 2017 while average worker earnings failed to keep pace with inflation, rising just 1.7%.
A worker on a median salary of £23,474 would have to work 167 years to earn the median annual pay of a FTSE 100 boss – up from 153 years in 2016.
Use of the median figure, which smooths out the impact of outsize payments by taking the mid-point when all CEO payments are lined up from the biggest to smallest, mitigated the effect of the two largest and most controversial pay awards: the £47.1m awarded to Jeff Fairburn of the housebuilder Persimmon, last year’s biggest earner; and £42.8m for Simon Peckham, the boss of industrial turnaround specialist Melrose. Other big earners in 2017 included Rob Perrins of the housebuilder Berkeley, whose pay rose £17m to £27.9m, and Sky’s Jeremy Darroch, whose pay jumped to £16.3m from £4.6m.
Pay at Persimmon and Melrose sent the mean figure for chief executive pay – which divides total pay for FTSE 100 bosses by the number of CEOs – up 23% to £5.7m in 2017, which is nine times the rate of mean wage growth.
Chief executive pay at businesses on the FTSE 100 index surged 11% on a median basis in 2017 while average worker earnings failed to keep pace with inflation, rising just 1.7%.
A worker on a median salary of £23,474 would have to work 167 years to earn the median annual pay of a FTSE 100 boss – up from 153 years in 2016.
Use of the median figure, which smooths out the impact of outsize payments by taking the mid-point when all CEO payments are lined up from the biggest to smallest, mitigated the effect of the two largest and most controversial pay awards: the £47.1m awarded to Jeff Fairburn of the housebuilder Persimmon, last year’s biggest earner; and £42.8m for Simon Peckham, the boss of industrial turnaround specialist Melrose. Other big earners in 2017 included Rob Perrins of the housebuilder Berkeley, whose pay rose £17m to £27.9m, and Sky’s Jeremy Darroch, whose pay jumped to £16.3m from £4.6m.
Pay at Persimmon and Melrose sent the mean figure for chief executive pay – which divides total pay for FTSE 100 bosses by the number of CEOs – up 23% to £5.7m in 2017, which is nine times the rate of mean wage growth.
Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, the umbrella body for British trade unions, said: “Pay for most people is barely rising at all. So working people will find it hard to understand why fat cat executives are splashing the cash for themselves. Workers should get seats on boardroom pay committees to bring a bit of common sense to pay decisions. And the government should put the minimum wage up to £10 an hour to give more workers a fairer share of the wealth they create.”
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