The chief executive of a FTSE 350 company is paid 52 times as much as a typical worker, according to the latest measure of inequality between bosses and their employees. Median pay for FTSE 350 chief executives was £2.5m last year, which works out at 52 times a median worker’s pay, according to a new report from the High Pay Centre campaign group. The widest gap was found at the cleaning, security and waste management group Mitie, whose chief executive, Phil Bentley, was paid £14.7m, 575 times more than a middle-earner in the 2023-24 financial year. Tesco ranked the second highest for the same period among FTSE 350 companies legally obliged to report the figure. With a package worth nearly £10m, the supermarket’s chief executive, Ken Murphy, was paid 431 times more than a typical Tesco worker that year. The most recent ratio, for the company’s 2024-25 financial year, was lower, at a multiple of 373 as Murphy’s pay fell to £9.2m. Luke Hildyard, the director of the High Pay Centre, said a maximum pay ratio between chief executives and workers could help ensure that all workers received “a fair reward for their contribution to business success”. The High Pay Centre suggested all companies should be required to publish their CEO-to-worker pay gaps in their annual reports, and include pay figures for outsourced workers in their calculations.
BBQ - Do you think this gap is too big? Should there be a limit?
