Executive pay keeps rising, Guardian survey finds

This article in The Guardian contains a wealth of information on Chief Executive pay within the UK’s FTSE 100 Companies, and also includes an illuminating downloadable spreadsheet of data which analyses the UK’s high earners by gender, age and nationality, and additionally provides a thought-provoking comparison of the salary of each company’s CEO with that of the average employee within the company.

Despite the current recession which has led to FTSE 100 companies losing almost a third of their value, executives at Britain’s top companies saw their basic salaries leap by 10% last year. The most highly paid chief executive was Bart Becht of Reckitt Benckiser who received £36.8m in pay, bonuses, perks and share incentive schemes.That’s a mind-boggling 1374 times more than that of the average employee in the company that he leads.

The Guardian’s annual survey of boardroom pay reveals that the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company now earns a basic salary of £791,000. However, adding bonus payments, share awards and the value of perks (which range from cars and drivers to school fees and dental work), the average pay package rises dramatically. Nearly a quarter of FTSE chief executives received total 2008 pay packages in excess of £5m, and 22 directors now have basic salaries of more than £1m.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable called such pay deals “breathtakingly cynical,” while Brendan Barber of the TUC commented that “it looks depressingly like we are going back to 1980s greed-is-good politics.”

The article offers a wealth of opportunity to explore the issue of boardroom pay especially during a period of recession, and it’s also suggested that students are introduced to the work of campaigning group Compass who are calling on the UK government to establish a commission to examine the remuneration packages of the UK’s top Chief Executives

Executive Pay keeps rising, Guardian survey finds