FTSE 100 bosses take home an average of £5.5m per year as CEO pay packages continue to grow despite increased economic uncertainty, according to new research
The average pay for a FTSE 100 CEO has increased by 10% from £4.96m in 2014 to £5.48m in 2015.
An annual survey of FTSE 100 pay packages by the High Pay Centre shows rewards at top positions continue to grow at alarming rates, especially at a time of economic uncertainty and when corporate performance is mixed.
Despite company bosses receiving 10% pay rises only a quarter of FTSE 100 firms pay the living wage leading to a growing gap in wages.
The average pay ratio between FTSE 100 CEOs and the average wage of their employees is 140:1.
The research comes a week after prime minister, Theresa May, addressed that the growing pay gap between CEOs and everyone else is hard to justify post-Brexit when economic uncertainty in high.
May said: ‘There is an irrational, unhealthy and growing gap between what these companies pay their workers and what they pay their bosses.’
Stefan Stern, director of the High Pay Centre said: ‘The High Pay Centre was delighted by Theresa May’s recent intervention on this issue. There now seems to be political will and momentum behind attempts to reform top pay.
‘In particular we support two of her main proposals: that companies should be obliged to publish the ratio between the pay of the CEO and the average worker in the business, and that the voice of the ordinary employee must be heard in discussions over executive pay.’
No women made it into the top 10 highest paid CEOs in the last two years and 10% of FTSE 100 companies had no female executive directors and no female remuneration committee members.
The top paid CEO has been Sir Martin Sorrell at WPP for the past two years.
The 10 highest paid CEOs in 2015 and 2014 were as follows:
2015 | 2014 |
Company | CEO | Total pay £000 | Company | CEO | Total pay £000 |
WPP | Sir Martin Sorrell | 70,416 | WPP | Sir Martin Sorrell | 42,978 |
Berkeley Group | Tony Pidgeley | 23,296 | Royal Dutch Shell | Ben van Beuren | 19,510 |
Reckitt Benckiser | Rakesh Kapoor | 23,190 | Relx (Reed Elsevier) | Erik Engstrom | 16,176 |
Sky | Jeremy Darroch | 16,889 | Tui Travel | Peter Long | 13,333 |
Shire | Flemming Ornskov | 14,638 | Prudential | Tidjane Thiam | 11,834 |
BP | Bob Dudley | 13,296 | Lloyds Banking Group | Antonio Horta-Osorio | 11,544 |
Relx (Reed Elsevier) | Erik Engstrom | 10,869 | Reckitt Benckiser | Rakesh Kapoor | 11,237 |
Prudential | Mike Wells | 10,031 | Hargreaves Lansdown | Ian Gorham | 10,608 |
Schroders | Michael Dobson/Peter Harrison | 8,905 | Experian | Don Robert | 9,868 |
Lloyds Banking Group | Antonio Horta-Osorio | 8,773 | BP | Bob Dudley | 9,289 |
Stern said: ‘There is apparently no end yet in sight to the rise and rise of FTSE100 CEO pay packages. In spite of the occasional flurry from more active shareholders, boards continue to award ever larger amounts of pay to their most senior executives.’
The State of Pay: High Pay Centre briefing on executive pay is here.
