UK top bosses earn 118 times pay of workers: study

LONDON

Bosses running Britain's biggest listed companies enjoyed payrises of 16 percent last year as workers' wages struggled with the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, a research has found.

According to independent think-tank the High Pay Centre, the median FTSE 100 chief executive officer was paid 118 times the median U.K. full-time worker, up from 108 times in 2021.

Pascal Soriot, of pharma giant AstraZeneca, was the highest paid company chief, earning 16.85 million pounds ($21.5 million) - ahead of Charles Woodburn of BAE Systems, who earned 10.69 million pounds.

Average pay for a FTSE 100 CEO rose from 3.38 million pounds in 2021, to 3.91 pounds million in 2022, the research found.

Unions said the findings showed Britain had become "a land of grotesque extremes."

"While millions of families have seen their budgets shredded by the cost-of-living crisis, city directors have enjoyed bumper pay rises," said Trade Union Congress general secretary Paul Nowak.

Official figures showed workers saw average pay rises of 7.8 percent over the three months to June compared to a year earlier, but this was reduced to 0.6 percent once inflation was taken into account.

Britain has been hit by strikes across the economy over the past year from ambulance drivers and doctors to lawyers and teachers as inflation has risen sending housing, food and heating costs soaring.

UK inflation - currently running at 6.8 percent down from 7.9 percent in June - has for months been the highest among G7 nations, despite the Bank of England hiking its key interest rate more than a dozen times in succession to try to tame it.