Top executive pay increase for UK bosses is three times that for employees

The pay of the top executives at the leading UK companies continued to increase by considerably more than that of their employees and well ahead of inflation over 2015, according to analysis published Wednesday.

The High Pay Center (HPC), a London-based think-tank, revealed that its analysis of the pay of the chief executives of 62 of the FTSE 100 share index listed companies showed that their pay had increased by an average of 6 percent through 2015.

The wage increases for the chief executives outstrip both UK inflation, which is at 0.5 percent (March figures), and weekly wage growth for employees, which is 2.2 percent in the year to the end of January, according to Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures.

Among the CEOs receiving big increases in pay were the chief executive officers (CEO) of Experian and of Diageo, who received more than an 11.5-million-pound (about 16.35 million U.S. dollars) increase each over their previous year's pay. The CEO at Royal Dutch Shell increased by more than 15 million pounds in 2015 over the 2014 figure.

Stefan Stern, director of the HPC, said: "The evidence which is coming directly from companies' own annual reports is that the 20-year rising trend in top company pay continues unabated. The UK's new disclosure rules now allow investors to observe this as it happens, but the latent power possessed by investors to call a halt to these excessive rewards remains largely unexercised."

The HPC analysed pay disclosures for 62 companies which have reported so far this year, and were FTSE 100 members at the point of reporting on their financial year's ending 2015. All the companies were also members of the FTSE 100 in August 2015. (1 pound = 1.42 U.S. dollars) Endit