AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot gets paid £15.3m a year(Image: PA)

Fatcat bosses take home more money by 1pm today than average worker will earn all year

Big bosses like pharmaceuticals chief Pascal Soriot and weapons manufacturer Charles Woodburn earn over a hundred times more per hour than what an average worker can make in a whole year

by · The Mirror

The average fatcat boss will have raked in more by 1pm today than a typical worker will earn all year.

Analysis by the High Pay Centre found the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company makes £3.81million a year, or the equivalent of £1,171.56 an hour. That is 109 times the average salary for a full-time worker of £34,943.

The highest-paid FTSE fatcats – such as AstraZeneca’s £15.3m Pascal Soriot and BAE Systems’ £10.7m Charles Woodburn – earn several times more.

Workers’ average pay has risen 6% in the past year, while top bosses have netted an extra 9.5%. Despite this, there are growing calls in the City for big bosses in the UK to be paid even more.

Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, said: “Lobbyists for big business spent much of 2023 arguing that top earners in Britain aren’t paid enough. They think economic success is created by a tiny number at the top. We end up with massive inequality and ­stagnating living standards.”

TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said: “The Conservatives are enabling obscene levels of pay inequality. While working people have been forced to suffer the longest wage squeeze in modern history, City bosses have been allowed to pocket bumper rises.”

A spokesman for the Government said: "We have given millions of workers across the UK a historic pay rise thanks to our decision to increase the National Living Wage to £11.44 an hour. In total since 2010, the annual earnings of a full-time worker on the National Living Wage will have increased by over £10,000, demonstrating how we are delivering for those in work."

Top five best paid FTSE 100 CEOs in 2022:

  1. Pascal Soriot - AstraZeneca - £15.3m
  2. Charles Woodburn - BAE Systems - £10.7m
  3. Albert Manifold - CRH - £10.4m
  4. Bernard Looney - BP - £10m (since left)
  5. Ben Van Beurden - Shell - £9.7m (since left)