The average total pay for FTSE 100 CEOs rose to a record £3.9mn in 2021-22, up from £3.6mn in 2018-19.
While the rest of us are being urged to show pay restraint amid rising inflation and a cost of living crisis, in the words of the RMT’s Eddie Dempsey, those at the top of the economy are indeed ‘having a disco’, with the pay of FTSE 100 chief executives increasing by an average of 23 per cent this year.
The findings came following research by PwC, which found that the average total pay for FTSE 100 CEOs rose to a record £3.9mn in 2021-22, up from £3.6mn in 2018-19. The report says that the increase in average pay was driven by record bonus payouts.
The FT reported: “Many companies bounced back strongly as Covid-19 lockdowns ended, leading to an average CEO bonus of 86 per cent of the maximum available, up from 58 per cent last year and against a long term average of 70 to 75 per cent, according to PwC.”
Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre think-tank, told the paper that such pay increases “for people who are already multimillionaires are far from ideal at a time when their lower-paid colleagues are denied a pay rise that keeps up with inflation”.
It’s also worth pointing out that average FTSE 100 CEO pay rose from £2,460,000 in 2020 to £3,410,000 in 2021.
The average FTSE 100 chief executive is now paid 109 times the average full time UK worker’s salary.
Where are the calls for pay restraint for multimillionaires that the rest of us are being asked to show?
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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