“There is an irrational, unhealthy and growing gap between what these companies pay their workers and what they pay their bosses”, she said at the time.
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Latest analysis from the High Pay Centre reveals that company chiefs now earn 140 times more than the average employee.
FTSE 100 chief executives’ pay rose by a tenth previous year to an average of £5.5m, according to a survey that will bolster demands by United Kingdom prime minister Theresa May for top companies to curb excess in the boardroom.
‘There is apparently no end yet in sight to the rise and rise of FTSE 100 CEO pay packages.
The highest-paid executives are also exclusively men, according the State of Pay report by the High Pay Centre, a think tank which monitors income distribution in big business.
Britain’s top-earning CEO was Sir Martin Sorrell, of WPP, with a whopping salary of £70.416 million.
In contrast to the pay packages awarded to their executives, only a quarter of the 100 FTSE 100 companies are accredited by the Living Wage Foundation for paying the living wage to all their UK-based staff.
In April, BP investors rejected a pay package of nearly £14m for chief executive Bob Dudley, at the oil company’s annual general meeting.
Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to rein in excessive corporate pay through a series of boardroom reforms, including giving employee representatives a seat at the table. The pay ratio between FTSE 100 CEOs and the average total pay of employees was 129:1 past year.
Stefan Stern, the outspoken director of the High Pay Centre, slammed the “very slight easing” of the pay ratio as “still an extraordinary gap by historic standards”, adding it was not totally clear what had driven the closing of the gap.
Tony Pidgley, the founder and chairman of house builder Berkeley Group, came second with £23m.
“The question the outside world keeps asking is ‘How much?!’ How much better to try and answer that question internally first with concerned yet supportive employees?” He was paid £11,237,000 in 2014. The others include Rakesh Kapoor at pharmaceuticals group Reckitt Benckiser, who took home £23m; Bob Dudley, who collected £13m for running the oil group BP; and the banker António Horta Osório, who was paid £8.8m at Lloyds Group, which is partly owned by the taxpayer.
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In her maiden speech as prime minister on 18 July, Theresa May vowed to tackle the growing pay gap between employers and employees.
