UK CEO pay hits record £5.06m as gap with workers widens to 130-fold

Britain's largest companies handed their chief executives record pay packages last year, pushing the earnings chasm between boardroom and shop floor to its widest point in nearly a decade. The median FTSE 100 CEO took home £5.06m in the last financial year—a jump of 8.6% from £4.66m the year before and the highest figure ever recorded, according to analysis released by the High Pay Centre in what will be its final report before closing after 15 years of scrutiny.

The numbers tell a stark story about where corporate wealth is flowing. While the average full-time UK worker earns £39,000 annually, the typical chief executive of a major listed company now earns 130 times that amount. That ratio has climbed from 124 times the previous year, marking the widest gap since 2018, when it briefly touched 137 times. The gap has been widening steadily since the pandemic, when many CEOs temporarily accepted pay cuts as lockdowns disrupted business. Those cuts, it seems, have long since been restored and then some.

The scale of executive compensation at Britain's largest firms is staggering in absolute terms. FTSE 100 companies spent £856.6m on pay during the year, with £550m of that going directly to chief executives. Long-term incentive payments—the kind of deferred bonuses that reward executives for sustained performance—averaged £2.7m per boss, up a fifth from the previous year. Short-term incentive payments rose 14% to £1.8m on average. Sixty-six of the 94 large listed companies analyzed increased their chief executive's pay package from the previous year.

At the top of the heap sat Pascal Soriot, chief executive of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, who collected £17.7m. He has held the title of highest-paid FTSE 100 boss for three of the last four years. Emma Walmsley of GSK claimed second place with £15.6m in her final year leading the company—a near-50% pay rise that propelled her into the upper echelon. She remains the only woman in the top ten highest-paid executives. CS Venkatakrishnan of Barclays took £15m, the largest package for a Barclays chief executive since 2011, after EU bonus restrictions were scrapped for UK banks. Shell's Wael Sawan received a 60% pay rise to £13.7m despite the company's profits slumping, while Bill Winters of Standard Chartered collected £12.7m.

The High Pay Centre, founded in 2011 by Deborah Hargreaves, a former Guardian business editor, has spent its final years arguing that this concentration of wealth at the top comes at the direct expense of ordinary workers. Andrew Speke, the organization's interim director, called the widening gap "a wake-up call to those who've turned a blind eye to rising executive pay." He warned that "a failure to tackle such disproportionate and inefficient levels of inequality will only further reduce faith in our current economic model and help to accelerate the rise of rightwing populism."

The organization is pushing for structural reforms before it closes: a "fat-cat tax" on excessive executive pay, the appointment of two workers as board directors at major companies, and full implementation of Labour's employment rights bill, which would require employers to inform workers of their trade union rights. These proposals arrive as Andy Burnham prepares to become prime minister, having previously signaled openness to a public debate about excessive pay and pledged to give struggling families "breathing space" from the cost-of-living crisis.

The High Pay Centre's closure marks the end of an era of independent scrutiny on this issue. Its final report shows executive pay rising for the fourth consecutive year, with growth now substantially outpacing wage increases for the broader workforce. The question of whether the incoming government will act on these warnings—or whether the widening gap will continue unchecked—remains unanswered.