The heads of the UK’s most valuable companies are being paid more than ever before – with the average chief executive paid more than 100 times that of the average worker, according to analysis from the High Pay Centre thinktank.

The CEOs of the most valuable firms listed on the London Stock Exchange – the companies comprising the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 index – received an average 2.2% pay rise bringing median pay to £4.19m.

It’s the highest sum ever recorded.

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Average pay is calculated by adding all the pay cheques and dividing that by the number of people being paid, while the median is the midpoint of the highest and lowest payment.

When average pay from 2023 is looked at the figure is even higher, £4.98m – up 12.2% from 2022 and equating to a more than £500,000 increase, according to High Pay Centres figures.

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The best paid boss on the FTSE 100 was AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot, who made £16.85m.

Erik Engstrom, boss of analytics giant RELX, was next with £13.64m, followed by Rolls-Royce CEO Tufan Erginbilgic with £13.61m.

In total, FTSE 100 companies spent £755m on the pay of 222 executives, the High Pay Centre said.

Nine companies paid out more than £10m to individual executives last year, up from just four in 2022.

Women paid less

Women make up the minority of CEOs and were paid less than their male counterparts.

In total, 11 women served as CEOs for at least part of the year, with just eight remaining at the end of the financial year.

Only six companies had female leadership for the whole financial year, with their median pay amounting to £2.69m.

Male CEOs on the other hand had median pay of £4.19m.

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‘Huge pay gap between CEOs and wider UK workforce’

The pay rises come after pleas for bigger and better pay packages for City bosses.

Dame Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange, said earlier this year chiefs are being paid “significantly below global benchmarks” and warned it may make it harder to attract the top executives who can seek better remuneration elsewhere.

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The High Pay Centre report argued excessive spending on top earners by leading firms makes it harder to fund pay increases for the wider UK workforce.

“The huge pay gap between executives and the wider UK workforce is a result of factors like the decline of trade union membership, low levels of worker participation in business decision-making and a business culture that puts the interests of investors before workers, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

“These developments have been very good for those at the top but it is more questionable whether they are in the interests of the country as a whole.”

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