British executives big winners despite slump

Recession or not, Britain's top executives are still earning a typical £3.1 million ($6.8 million) a year each - with a "poor correlation" between their pay and shareholder value, say two of the country's leading authorities in the field.

The level of remuneration will fuel the debate about boardroom excesses, with a crucial vote on pay at Marks & Spencer due next week.

Shell and Tesco are two of the other leading British companies that have suffered from adverse publicity about "fat cattery".

MM&K, a business consultancy, and Manifest, which advises institutional investors on how to vote at corporate AGMs, say the typical pay of a FTSE-100 boss rose by 5 per cent since the slump began in 2008.

This contrasts with the pay of many private-sector staff further down the organisations they lead, who have agreed to minimal pay rises or to pay freezes to help preserve jobs and the future of their companies.

There is also an embarrassing comparison with earnings per share for these companies - down 1 per cent over the same period. Looking over a 10-year horizon, the researchers found that despite widespread share-price declines, CEO remuneration has quadrupled.

Most striking of all is the rise of the shorter-term bonus as a method of incentivising directors, ironically just as it is being punished in the banking sector for causing such damage.

Such bonuses now amount to a potential 300 per cent of salary.

The survey shows that chief executives of larger companies are the "clear winners in the remuneration race", enjoying up to 300 per cent of their salaries as bonuses compared with CEOs in smaller organisations (with a £100 million to £1 billion market capitalisation) where bonuses are typically capped at a still-healthy 100 per cent.

For larger companies, maximum bonus levels as a proportion of their salaries are about 25 per cent higher than in 2006 - and their salaries are 16 per cent higher too.

Commenting on the findings, Cliff Weight, director of MM&K, said: "Many performance-related pay schemes appear designed to satisfy the CEO and in fact offer little incentive for anything above just 'adequate' performance."

- INDEPENDENT