Bosses at Britain’s biggest companies saw their pay rise by almost 16% on average last year as most workers’ wages were squeezed by rising prices. The High Pay Centre said the median pay of a FTSE 100 chief executive was £3.91m in 2022, up from £3.38m in 2021.
And it said the average earnings of a FTSE 100 boss was 118 times more than a typical UK worker on £33,000 a year.
According to the High Pay Centre’s research, the highest paid chief executive last year was Sir Pascal Soriot, the boss of the drugs giant AstraZeneca, with £15.3m. The British-Swedish company became a household name when it teamed up with Oxford University scientists to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.
Charles Woodburn of security and aerospace firm BAE Systems was the second highest earner with £10.7m, while Emma Walmsley, boss of GlaxoSmithKline, was the highest female earner with £8.45m. Ben van Beurden, the former boss of energy giant Shell with £9.7m, and BP’s Bernard Looney securing £10.03m featured in the top six biggest earners after both firms reported record profits on soaring energy prices.
The think tank, which analysed the pay of chief executives of all companies on the UK’s blue chip company index through firms’ annual reports for 2022, reported median pay was more than £500,000 up on 2021, continuing its upward trend since it dropped to £2.46m in 2020 during the height of the pandemic.
The High Pay Centre said the rise was in part due to the economic recovery following lockdowns and through bosses having “strong incentive pay awards tied to profitability and share prices”.
Workers’ wages on average have failed keep up with rising prices, especially for gas, electricity and food during last year and this year so far.
Inflation, which is the rate consumer prices rise at, is currently at 6.8% in the year to July. However, the figure was much higher throughout the majority of 2022, peaking at 11.1% last October, meaning back then goods on average were more than 10% more expensive compared to prices the year before.
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show regular pay growth, which excludes bonuses, reached 7.8% over the three months to June compared to a year earlier, but actually dropped by 0.6% once inflation was taken into account.
Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, said if the government “genuinely think high wages are going to cause spiralling inflation, they probably need to think about curbing pay at the top of the tree, rather than everyone else. While workers in sectors across the board were forced onto picket lines to make ends meet, these top brass were trousering fortunes.”
The Treasury declined to comment on the report.
It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, it’s the poor what gets the blame … 
