Pay gap widens in British boardrooms as Tesco boss Ken Murphy earns 431 times more than a typical worker

Tesco is Britain’s most unequal blue chip company, according to an annual audit of its executive pay published today by The Mail on Sunday.

Ken Murphy, chief executive of the country’s biggest supermarket, earned £10m in 2023, which is 431 times the sum a typical Tesco worker earns. He earned more in one day than Tesco staff in the UK on average make for the whole year.

The scale of the pay gap at the supermarket chain dwarfs that of other FTSE 100 companies.

Compass, whose boss Dominic Blakemore was paid 303 times the amount paid to the average employee in the catering business, was next on the list.

Others with big pay gaps between boss and top earner include retailers Sainsbury’s, B&Q owner Kingfisher and clothing giant Next.

The findings are part of the Mail on Sunday’s Fat Cat Files, which chart the millions of pounds handed out each year in pay, bonuses and benefits to the bosses of Britain’s biggest companies.

The audit shows that in 2023:

– FTSE 100 chief executives received an average salary of £4.7m, an increase of £300,000 on the previous year.

– AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot was again the highest-paid boss in the FTSE 100, taking home £16.9m

– The highest-paid chief executive in the FTSE 100 index was Emma Walmsley of rival pharmaceutical group GSK, on ​​£12.7m.

– The number of bosses who earned more than £10m has doubled to eight

– CFOs also fared well, pocketing more than £2.2m each on average.

– The highest paid CFOs were Brad Greve of defence giant BAE and Nick Luff of information and analytics firm Relx. They both received £7.1m.

– Nearly a quarter of FTSE 100 chief financial officers (who are often a stepping stone to chief executive) are now women, raising hopes that women may finally be breaking the glass ceiling.

Our findings will fuel the debate over increasing executive pay. They come at a time when major companies are pushing for even bigger rewards for their leaders, saying they need to be paid more to compete with US rivals.

The typical FTSE 100 chief executive earns 120 times more than the average employee pay, according to the High Pay Centre think tank, but could soon be taking home even more.

Sixteen of the top 100 companies are looking to revamp their pay policies, according to business consultancy Deloitte.

Nine of the companies have drawn up “radical” plans to increase their bosses’ salaries this year, compared with four previously.

Among those leading calls for even more to be paid to British-based employers is Rupert Soames, chairman of the Confederation of British Industry lobby group.

He has dubbed many FTSE 100 companies ‘Brilos’ (British listed companies only) because most of their revenues come from overseas.

Soames also chairs Smith & Nephew, the medical equipment group, where nearly half of its shareholders voted against plans to give chief executive Deepak Nath a huge pay rise.

The Fat Cat Files found it was the biggest investor revolt at a major company last year.

Julia Hoggett, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, is also at the forefront of the fight over CEO pay. The chief executive of the London Stock Exchange has warned that a “lack of a level playing field” is leading to a brain drain from the City to New York and elsewhere.

Shareholders have backed plans to double the salary of its boss, David Schwimmer, to £13.2m.

Companies including chipmaker Arm Holdings, plumbing giant Ferguson and Tarmac owner CRH have already moved their primary listings from London to Wall Street, where sky-high boardroom salaries are more widely tolerated.

The huge sums on offer to US chief executives were highlighted this month when Brian Niccol, the new boss of Seattle-based coffee chain Starbucks, was given a pay package potentially worth more than £78m, with permission to work remotely from California.

Not all top executives made a lot of money last year. NatWest’s Alison Rose lost £5.1m after being ousted over the de-banking of Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage.

But his loss was minor compared with that of Bernard Looney at BP, who had £3m docked from his salary and lost up to £29m worth of shares after it was discovered he had lied to the board about his personal relationships with other employees.

Tesco defended Murphy’s award. Alison Platt, chair of the remuneration committee that sets executive pay, said at the time that she recognised “the strong performance of the business” and “the fact that Tesco has delivered for all its stakeholders over the past year”, including “a record investment in colleagues’ pay”.

Additional research by Angus Ritchie