Great British bosses had to make an effort this year: to earn as much as the median salary of a Briton, they had to work thirty-four hours, compared to thirty-three hours last year. According to calculations by the High Pay Center think tank, the CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies, the top 100 listed companies, matched the annual pay of a UK worker on January 6 at 5:30 p.m.
The calculation, which, each year, establishes the “bigwigs day”, or “Fat cats day” in English, is of course an approximation. It is based on the annual reports of companies published in 2020, which reveal the salaries of bosses for 2019 – before the impact of the pandemic. It nevertheless gives a good idea of the surge in these very high salaries. Today, these great British bosses earn 120 times more than median employees, compared to 50 times in 2000 and 20 times in the early 1980s.
The ratio has, however, been relatively stable for several years. The median salary of FTSE 100 bosses in 2019 was 3.61 million pounds (3.99 million euros), down … 0.5%. It’s hard to see a fundamental trend: in 2019, fifty companies in the FTSE 100 had reduced their remuneration, but forty-nine had increased it.
Glaring inequalities
The prize for the biggest salary does not go this year to a financier but to Tim Steiner, the boss of Ocado, an online supermarket. Co-founder of the group, he hit the jackpot thanks to the soaring share price of his company, on which his bonus is indexed. In total, he earned £ 58.7million in 2019.
New for 2020, large listed companies have for the first time been forced to disclose the median salary of their employees, by quartile. This information illustrates the glaring inequalities even within large groups. They are particularly strong in mass distribution: Ocado, JD Sports (sports shops) and Tesco (supermarkets) occupy the first three places – the salary of their boss is more than 300 times that of the median level of their employees (and even 2,600 times for Ocado).
Paradoxically, the financial sector is doing much better, with a ratio of 35, not because the top salaries are lower, but because the average salary is very high.
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