For the past year, it has been the London Stock Exchange’s chief executive, Julia Hoggett, leading calls for higher executive pay in the UK. This week, it will be LSE Group CEO David Schwimmer who inadvertently takes the lead, after reports emerged that his pay could more than double to £11m.

According to Sky News, a revised remuneration policy will see Schwimmer’s base salary, annual bonus and share awards add up to £11m, compared with £4.7m paid to the chief executive in 2022.

The news will help fuel a debate already under way about executive pay levels in the UK and claims that it is failing to keep pace with other markets.

Hoggett made headlines last year with a blogpost in which she argued the UK risked standing by while the country exported skills, talent and new listings.

“We should be encouraging and supporting UK companies to compete for talent on a global basis, so we remain an attractive place for companies to base themselves, stay and grow,” she wrote.

At the time, the High Pay Centre think tank described Hoggett’s remarks as “tone deaf”. The LSE has seen the number of listed companies fall from around 2,400 in 2015 to 1,900 at the latest count.

All in a day’s work

According to High Pay Centre figures, the average FTSE 100 CEO had earned as much as the annual average UK salary this year by 1pm on 4 January, an hour quicker than last year. In another piece of research, the think tank said the ratio of average FTSE 350 CEO pay to average UK salary has grown from 56:1 to 57:1.

A London Business School project recently found that many non-executives say they have held back from offering higher pay because of shareholder guidelines.

The research also found that CEO pay is rarely cut for performance reasons. The report said that “while good performance justifies pay increases, they [directors] do not believe poor performance justifies decreases”.

Sandy Pepper, a professor at the London School of Economics, suggested that those who argued higher executive pay could help solve UK economic woes were confusing “cause and effect”.

“Perhaps the time has come to shift the focus of the inequality debate to reducing poverty, restoring the real value of the pay of essential public sector workers and eliminating major defects in the welfare system, the true indicators of the country’s prosperity,” Pepper said.

The debate around executive pay has intensified and will continue to do so while key figures believe it may be an answer to the UK’s competitiveness. Others may argue that the UK’s economy is suffering for much bigger reasons.