Ninety per cent of FTSE 100 CEO’s are paid 100 times more than a national living wage, according to a campaign group which has called on boards to share how they will manage their pay gaps.
The Equality Trust published its FTSE 100 pay survey this week, and also revealed that 67% of the CEOs are paid more than 100 times the average UK wage.
The highest paid FTSE 100 CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, is paid 2,550 times more than the average UK wage, and 5,154 times more than the national living wage.
The CEO with the lowest ratio is at the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, where the CEO salary is two times the average wage and three times the living wage.
The data will feed into the growing demand for companies and government to act on excessive executive pay levels. The Equality Trust is campaigning for mandatory pay-ratio reporting for all medium and large companies.
The Trust argues that companies have a responsibility to pay employees fairly and “not allow themselves to become engines of inequality that drive social and economic division in the UK”.
It added: “In fact, Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, in requiring the directors to promote the success of the company for its members, explicitly tasks them to have regard to the interests of the company’s employees the impact on the community and the reputation of the company. It could be argued that directors are flouting the spirit, if not the word, of the law when they preside over vast pay differences in their companies.
“We know there is a great deal of concern within the business community about inequality and much discussion about the role business has to play in tackling it. We would therefore like to take this opportunity to invite all of the FTSE 100 companies to contact us and let us know their views, and how they intend to manage their pay gaps in future.”