Average Annual Salary of Top 100 UK CEOs 6.7 Billion KRW... 118 Times That of Regular Employees

CEO Salaries of Top 100 Market Cap Companies Total 6.7 Billion Won
118 Times That of Regular Full-Time Workers
CEOs of Top 500 US Market Cap Companies Earn 18.8 Billion Won

The CEO salaries of the UK's top 100 representative companies (FTSE 100) increased by about 16% last year.

According to the UK think tank High Pay Centre on the 21st (local time), the CEOs of the top 100 companies included in the FTSE 100 index received an average salary of 3.91 million pounds (approximately 6.7 billion KRW) last year. This represents a 15.7% increase compared to the previous year's salary of 3.38 million pounds (approximately 5.8 billion KRW).

Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, the UK's largest pharmaceutical company, received the highest total salary of 15.3 million pounds (approximately 26.1 billion KRW). Charles Woodburn, CEO of the aerospace and defense company BAE Systems, and Bernard Looney, CEO of the oil company British Petroleum (BP), each earned more than 10 million pounds (approximately 1.71 billion KRW) annually.

The wage increase rate for CEOs of the top 100 companies was much steeper than that of mid-sized companies. The CEO salary of companies included in the FTSE 250 index, which covers mid-sized UK stocks, was 1.77 million pounds (approximately 3 billion KRW) last year, rising only 2.9% compared to the previous year. This is about one-fifth of the salary increase rate of FTSE 100 CEOs. The wage gap between CEOs of FTSE 100 companies and regular employees also widened from 108 times in 2021 to 118 times last year.

The UK government and the Bank of England (BOE) have recently urged employers to restrain wage increases due to concerns about wage-driven inflation. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called for "more restraint" in labor wage negotiations, and the BOE warned against "unsustainable" wage increases while continuing the fight against inflation. However, major company CEOs actually received salaries last year that far exceeded the annual consumer price inflation rate of 10.5%.

Gary Smith, General Secretary of the UK's largest labor union, the GMB, said, "Workers across all sectors are being pushed to picket lines just to make ends meet, while 'fat cat' CEOs' salaries are soaring," adding, "If ministers truly believe that high wages are driving inflation, they should consider measures to curb the wages of the top-tier executives rather than the entire workforce."

However, there is also an opinion that UK CEOs do not receive as much compensation compared to the US. According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), CEOs of companies included in the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 index received an average salary of 14.1 million dollars (approximately 18.8 billion KRW) last year. The average annual salary of CEOs of the top 500 companies listed in the US is about 18.8 billion KRW, which is three times that of the UK's top 100 companies (6.7 billion KRW) and six times that of the top 250 companies (3 billion KRW).

A UK government official stated, "We will not comment on the wage-setting methods of private companies," adding, "It is the shareholders' responsibility to intervene in companies."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.