The UK’s highest paid bosses will pass the UK average salary of £28,200, less than two days into the new year, reveals Research by the High Pay Centre. The calculations are based on median FTSE 100 CEO pay in 2015 of £3.9m.

Assuming FTSE 100 CEOs work 12 hours a day, including three out of every four weekends, and take fewer than 10 days holiday per year, this works out at about £1,009 per hour. The research does not clarify how many CEOs actually take such short holidays.

The High Pay Centre says it would take around 28 hours’ work to surpass the UK average salary of £28,200. This is scheduled to occur today, assuming the CEOs went into work at the beginning of the week at the start of the New Year.

Stefan Stern, High Pay Centre director, said: ‘Our new year calculation is not designed to make the return to work harder than it already is. But “Fat Cat Wednesday” is an important reminder of the continuing problem of the unfair pay gap in the UK.

‘We hope the government will recognise that further reform to pay practices are needed if this gap is to be closed. That will be the main point in our submission to the business department in its current consultation over corporate governance reform.’

Stern pointed to research indicating the average pay ratio between FTSE 100 CEOs and the average total pay of their employees in 2015 was 129:1, and said making the publication of pay ratios compulsory will help track progress on closing this gap.

‘Effective representation for ordinary workers on the company remuneration committees that set executive pay, and publication of the pay ratio between the highest and average earner within a company, would bring a greater sense of proportion to the setting of top pay,’ Stern said.

Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising group WPP, headed the table of the top ten highest paid FTSE 100 bosses in 2015, as he did the previous year, but had his pay package of £70m challenged by a third of shareholders at the company’s AGM.