The salaries of big bosses have stagnated across the Channel, but remain at historically very high levels.
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The big British bosses had to make an effort this year: to earn as much as the median salary of a Briton, they had to work thirty-four hours, against thirty-three hours last year. According to calculations by the High Pay Center, a think tank, the CEOs of the FTSE 100 companies, the top 100 listed companies, matched the annual pay of a UK worker on January 6 at 5.30 p.m.
The calculation, which, each year, allows to establish the “day of the big bonnets”, or “fat cats day” in English, is of course an approximation. It is based on the annual reports of companies published in 2020, which reveal the salaries of bosses for 2019 – before the impact of the pandemic. It nevertheless gives a good idea of the surge in these very high salaries. Today, these great British bosses earn 120 times more than median employees, against 50 times in 2000 and 20 times in the early 1980s.
The ratio has, however, been relatively stable in recent years. The median salary of FTSE 100 bosses in 2019 was 3.61 million pounds (3.99 million euros), down … 0.5%. It’s hard to see a fundamental trend: in 2019, fifty FTSE 100 companies lowered their remuneration, but forty-nine had increased it.
Shining inequalities
The palm of the biggest salary this year does not go to a financier but to Tim Steiner, the boss of Ocado, an online supermarket. Co-founder of the group, he hit the jackpot thanks to the soaring share price of his company, on which his bonus is indexed. In total, he earned £ 58.7 million in 2019.
New for 2020, large listed companies were for the first time forced to disclose the median salary of their employees, by quartile. This information illustrates the glaring inequalities even within large groups. They are particularly strong in mass distribution: Ocado, JD Sports (sports shops) and Tesco (supermarkets) occupy the first three places – their boss’s salary is more than 300 times that of the median level of their employees (and even 2,600 times for Ocado).
Paradoxically, the financial sector is doing much better, with a ratio of 35, not because the top salaries are lower, but because the average salary is very high.
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