'Fat Cat Wednesday' has been and gone
Top executives will already have made more money by the first Wednesday of 2017 — 4 January — than the typical UK worker will earn all year.
After just two and a half working days Britain’s top bosses will have made more money than the average UK worker earns in an entire year, according to High Pay Centre calculations.
The median pay figure for chief executives (CEOs) in FTSE 100 companies in 2015 was £3.97 million. The High Pay Centre found that if CEOs are assumed to work long hours with very few holidays, this is equivalent to a rate of pay of over £1,000 an hour. On that basis, the average CEO passed the £28,200 a year average worker’s salary by around midday Wednesday, 4 January.
The average pay ratio between FTSE100 CEOs and the average pay of their employees in 2015 was 129:1, according to the High pay Centre.
Stefan Stern, director of the High Pay Centre, said: “Our new year calculation is not designed to make the return to work harder than it already is. But ‘Fat Cat Wednesday’ is an important reminder of the continuing problem of the unfair pay gap in the UK. We hope the government will recognise that further reforms to pay practices are needed if this gap is to be closed. That will be the main point in our submission to the business department in its current consultation over corporate governance reform.”