FTSE Fat Cats earn average UK salary on Thursday!

Bosses at Britain's biggest companies will earn more on Thursday morning than the average worker gets in a year, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Our 'Fat Cat Files' reveal that a typical CEO of a FTSE 100 company is now paid £4 million – more than 100 times the average salary of a full-time UK worker of just under £35,000.

But some earn much more and may have even greater pay gaps with employees. The news comes despite salaries rising at their fastest pace on record, while the cost of living is under pressure, fueled by soaring food and energy prices, which are only now starting to fall.

And it follows calls from business groups that executives must be paid even more if Britain is to compete as a global financial centre.

The calculations are based on average wage figures for bosses and regular employees.

Last year's biggest Footsie earners included Albert Manifold, the chief executive of construction group and Tarmac owner CRH, who made headlines earlier this year by shifting its stock market listing from London to New York.

In 2022, Manifold received £10.4 million – 259 times more than the average CRH employee.

That meant CRH had the largest pay gap of any blue chip company.

But this could become even greater, as US-based managers earn much more than their counterparts in Britain.

The analysis of Footsie's company accounts – which excludes three investment funds where boardroom pay is much lower – is consistent with a recent report from think tank High Pay Center.

The research found that the pay gap between top executives in the wider FTSE 350 index and their employees widened by up to 57 times, compared to 56 times the previous year.

According to Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, the gap narrowed in the first year of the pandemic as bosses gave up pay to show solidarity.

But pay gaps have returned to pre-coronavirus levels in the past two years, he said. London-listed companies with more than 250 employees must disclose the pay ratio between the CEO and employees.

The High Pay Center found that those with the lowest paid employees were retailers JD Sports, WH Smith and pub chain Mitchells & Butlers.

Julia Hoggett, head of the London Stock Exchange, has called for a “constructive discussion” about pay, amid fears that talented bosses could be tempted to dump British companies to the US, where the potential rewards are even higher.

Shareholders' simmering anger about the generosity displayed by some executives occasionally boils over.

One of the biggest uprisings took place at Unilever last month, when the owners of Ben & Jerry's ice cream were forced to freeze CEO Hein Schumacher's salary for the next two years after investors voted against the company's pay report.

Also in the doghouse is education publisher Pearson, where almost half of its investors refused to support its pay policies. Cevian, its largest shareholder, recently called on Pearson to move its main listing to New York to improve shareholder value.

Pearson and Unilever are among a slew of publicly traded companies on a government list of shame over excessive pay. Companies where more than a fifth of the shareholders protest are placed in the register, which is drawn up by the Investment Association.

The list was introduced in 2017 amid concerns that corporate greed was damaging confidence in capital markets.