Big business incomes rise twice as fast as UK inflation

Income for the bosses of Britain’s biggest companies has risen twice as fast as inflation this year, according to a study by consultancy PwC. This finding fuels criticism amid the cost-of-living crisis.

In a context of inflation of more than 10% in the UK, these amounts could be “distributed more evenly”, the director of the High Pay Center think tank, Luke Hildyard, told AFP.

The rise in income is largely due to soaring bonuses after “businesses reopen and demand returns after the pandemic,” says Andrew Page, an executive compensation specialist at PwC.

PcW specified on Monday (07) in a note that the average income of the directors of the FTSE 100, which gathers the 100 highest valuations of the London Stock Exchange, rose from 3.2 million pounds to 3.9 million pounds (4 .5 million euros, +22%) between 2021 and 2022.

Senior employee compensation had fallen during the pandemic following reductions in salaries and bonuses, whether voluntary or under pressure from shareholders or investors.

Several studies claim that since then, directors’ income increases have risen sharply and are at pre-pandemic levels.

“Over the past decade, investors have started to be stricter when it comes to director compensation” and FTSE 100 companies rarely pay more than “three to four million pounds” annually to their chief executives, says Hildyard.

However, “this is equivalent to paying them more than a hundred times the salary of the average British worker,” he insists.

For a few months, strikes to demand better wages multiplied in the face of widespread inflation in the UK.