Yahoo Finance These CEOs will have earned the average UK yearly salary by the weekend
It’s a good day to be the CEO of a major UK company.
That’s because by 1pm UK time, the average FTSE 100 company CEO will have made the equivalent of a full-time worker’s yearly take-home pay.
And that’s two hours faster than last year.
According to the High Pay Centre thinktank and HR body, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), top executives in the UK are making 133 times more than the average worker, up 11 per cent on last year.
It means the average CEO only needs to work 29 hours to make the same as an average UK worker is paid for an entire year.
“Average pay has stagnated whilst top CEO reward has grown, despite overall slow economic growth and very variable business performance,” the chief executive of the CIPD said, arguing that shareholders are looking for major shifts in corporate remuneration.
“Excessive pay packages awarded by remuneration committees represent a significant failure in corporate governance and perpetuate the idea of a ‘superstar’ business leader when business is a collective endeavour and reward should be shared more fairly.”
The general secretary of the UK Trades Union Congress, Frances O’Grady added that “greedy executives” are pocketing more than they deserve.
“We need to redesign the economy to make it fair again and that means big reforms to bring fat cat pay back down to earth.”
This comes as CEOs Down Under grapple with belligerent shareholder bases.
Just last month NAB and ANZ shareholders joined their Westpac counterparts in pushing back against executive bonuses.
NAB chairman Ken Henry was forced to acknowledge that the current remuneration scheme “is not right”, after 80 per cent of shareholders voted against the proposal to slash pay packets but retain bonuses.
“We tried, but we got it wrong. We are listening to you. We will try again,” he said.
Commenting on the surge of shareholder discontent, CEO of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors Louise Davidson said the unprecedented vote reflected the dissatisfaction and lack of trust.
“Reducing short-term bonuses, rather than zeroing them, was a hollow gesture and failed to meet investor and community expectations about accountability,” Davidson said.
The major banks also came under heavy and sustained fire last year as the Royal Commission live hearings took place.
Commissioner Kenneth Hayne is set to hand down his final report by 1 February 2019.
Make your money work with Yahoo Finance’s daily newsletter. Sign up here and stay on top of the latest money, news and tech news.
Now read: ‘We tried, but we got it wrong’: NAB, ANZ, Westpac forced to slash exec pay further
Now read: All the Big 4 bank CEOs have taken massive pay cuts
