The bosses of Britain’s top companies were paid an average salary of £5.5 million last year, earning 129 times more than their employees, a new report has shown.
The British think tank High Pay Center revealed on Monday, that the chief executives of firms on London's FTSE 100 index enjoyed a 10-percent rise in their mean average income.
This is while, according to the report, most employees of these companies received a pay rise of about 2 percent last year.
The report also revealed that the median pay for the top brass rose to just shy of £4m last year, 144 times the median yearly income of the average Briton which currently stands at around £27,600.
Sir Martin Sorrell, who heads the advertising group WPP, was the highest paid boss with a total of more than £70 million.
Berkeley Group's Tony Pidgley, and Reckitt Benckiser's Rakesh Kapoor, where two other high paying executives both of whom took home more than £23 million in 2015.
“There is apparently no end yet in sight for the rise and rise of chief executive pay packages,” said Stefan Stern, the think tank’s director. “In spite of the occasional flurry from more active shareholders, boards continue to award ever larger amounts of pay to their most senior executives.”
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to control excessive boardroom salaries, saying that shareholders should be able to cast binding votes on executive pay.
She admitted in July that an “irrational, unhealthy and growing gap” exists between what companies pay their workers and what they pay their executive boards.
The surging salaries for company bosses have prompted revolts among some shareholders who are seeking to curb the trend by putting the matter into vote. But such attempts have no legal effect and are simply ignored by executives.
The report comes in a time when British government is spending billions in tax money to reduce the impacts of poverty across the country.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) reported last week that on average each British taxpayer should shell out £1,200 a year in order to make up for £78 billion lost to the effects of poverty in the country.
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