Chief executive pay in the FTSE 100 edged upwards last year, amid an ongoing campaign by City figures to talk up the need for higher pay levels.

The High Pay Centre, a think tank, this week revealed research showing median CEO pay in the 100 largest companies had risen from £4.1m to £4.19m, a figure it said was the highest on record and an increase of 2.2%.

Mean CEO pay rose from £4.42m to £4.98m, an increase of more than £500,000 or 12.2%.

The High Pay Centre’s report, authored by Andrew Speke and Luke Hildyard, concludes: “These are extraordinary sums of money by any standard. The average pay for a FTSE 100 CEO is over 25 times the amount necessary to put the recipient in the top 1 per cent of UK earners, never mind the median worker.

“It is entirely understandable that lots of people feel very uncomfortable with pay awards that are way beyond what anyone needs to live a life of considerable luxury accruing to a tiny number of very wealthy executives, while millions of others work incredibly hard yet struggle to cover essential costs of living—housing, energy and food.”

Pascal’s wages

Of the FTSE 100 leaders, nine earned more than £10m, according to the High Pay centre, with Sir Pascal Soriot of AstraZeneca topping the list with £16.85m.

Julia Hoggett, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, last year began a public campaign supporting the need for higher pay levels, claiming they were needed to ensure the UK remained a competitive market.

In this year’s AGM season, several companies raised CEO pay, including the London Stock Exchange Group, which saw Hoggett’s boss, David Schwimmer, receive a pay award raising his pay deal from about £4.6m to £11m.

Some in the City argued that comparing UK and US pay levels was an error, while arguments advocating significantly higher pay levels “often lack merit”.

Nevertheless, pay levels rose. Hoggett boasted in a May speech that remuneration committee chairs were more willing to sit on the “naughty step” and accept shareholder revolts over pay in order to win their CEOs bigger pay packets.

Figures from the High Pay Centre come in the same week that the Office for National Statistics published figures showing that UK wage growth had slowed to the lowest rate in almost two years—poignant against CEO pay rises, but reassuring for those worried about inflation risk.

CEO pay rises are always controversial. The LSE and others in the City found space to air the issue, but that opportunity may have closed with the election of the Labour Party to power. Pay levels will be a sore point for some time to come.