The average pay for a CEO in the FTSE 100 is £5.48 million, according to the latest report by think-tank High Pay Centre, with no women making the list of top ten highest paid executives.

Chief executives of firms on London’s FTSE 100 index saw their mean average income rise by 10 percent in 2015, with bosses earning around 129 times the salary of their employees. The ‘excessive’ pay in Britain’s top companies recently prompted government scrutiny, with Theresa May looking to implement a series of boardroom reforms to counteract the “irrational, unhealthy and growing gap between what these companies pay their workers and what they pay their bosses”.

Several heads of large companies have come under fire recently for the size of their salary, with head of the advertising group WPP Sir Martin Sorrell recently being forced to defend his pay packet of over £70 million per year. Oil giant BP has also faced shareholder revolt over pay, with a salary of £14 million for CEO Bob Dudley being rejected at the company’s AGM.

Stefan Stern, director of the High Pay Centre, said: “There is apparently no end yet in sight to the rise and rise of FTSE 100 chief executive 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.”

Miranda Wadham on 08/08/2016