Bosses of companies that are not accredited living wage employers paid nearly £4m a year – their combined profits added up to over £85 billion
Ahead of ‘Living Wage Week’ (beginning 5 November) new research from the High Pay Centre think tank has found that some of Britain’s biggest companies are paying their top executives millions while denying their staff a living wage.
Median pay for the Chief Executive at the 61 FTSE 100 firms that are not accredited living wage employers was £3.8 million in the last financial year, according to the think tank’s research. Average pay, which is more influenced by a small number of very high earners, was £5.8 million.
The High Pay Centre also found:
– The 61 FTSE 100 companies that aren’t living wage employers paid their Chief Executives a combined total of £355 million in their most recent financial year.
– The median pay for the Chief Executives of these companies was £3.809 million. Average pay, which is more easily influenced by a small number of very high earners was £5.816 million.
– The median ratio of CEO pay to pay for their average employee was 82:1. The average ratio was 173:1
– On the median CEO pay package of £3.809 million, a CEO would earn the equivalent annual salary of a worker earning the living wage in about 14 hours.
– The median CEO pay package of £3.809 million could pay for 2,123 minimum wage workers to be raised up to living wage level.
The ten highest paid CEOs at companies that are not accredited living wage employers were as follows:
| Company | CEO | CEO pay (£000) |
| Persimmmon | Jeff Fairburn | 47,087 |
| Melrose | Simon Peckham | 42,764 |
| GVC Holdings | Kenny Alexander | 18,026 |
| Coca Cola HBC | Dimitris Lois*/Zoran Bogdanovic | 13,783 |
| Reckitt Benckiser | Rakesh Kapoor | 12,480 |
| British American Tobacco | Nicandro Durante | 11,423 |
| BP | Bob Dudley | 10,486 |
| Carnival | Arnold Donald | 8,906 |
| Prudential | Mike Wells | 8,702 |
| Vodafone | Vittorio Colao | 7,984 |
*Pay is the total for the CEO’s role over the year. Dimitris Lois died in office and was replaced by Zoran Bogdanovic
The findings will raise questions about whether directors are fully complying with the spirit of the 2006 Companies Act. The Act requires directors to act in a way that is consistent with the interests of the companies shareholders, but also to have regard for the interests of other stakeholder groups, such as their workers. The Government recently introduced new regulations forcing companies to explain how they take different stakeholder interests into account.