Executive pay keeps rising, Guardian survey finds

[CHIMO]

Source: The Guardian

Executives at Britain's top companies saw their basic salaries leap 10% last year, despite the onset of the worst global recession in decades, in which their companies lost almost a third of their value amid a record decline in the FTSE.

The Guardian's annual survey of boardroom pay reveals that the full- and part-time directors of the FTSE 100, the premier league of British business, shared between them more than £1bn.

Bonus payouts were lower, but the basic salary hikes were more than three times the 3.1% average pay rise for ordinary workers in the private sector. The big rise in directors' basic pay – more than double the rate of inflation last year – came as many of their companies were imposing pay freezes on staff and starting huge redundancy programmes to slash costs.

The Guardian data also shows that a coterie of elite bosses at the helm of multinational corporations are seeing their overall pay packets soar ever higher. The 10 most highly paid executives earned a combined £170m last year – up from £140m in 2007. Five years ago, the top 10 banked some £70m.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/14/executive-pay-keeps-rising

---

Bart Becht, the chief executive of Reckitt Benckiser, was rewarded with £36.8m in pay, bonuses, perks and share incentive schemes. Photograph: PR

[thecrow]

1. Oh, snap! I am in the wrong business!

I thought working nearly 40 years at my trade and being honest was the way to go.
Now I'm unemployed and this joker got WHAT?

[DavidDvorkin]

2. No one could have predicted that!

[IDFbunny]

3. Executive pay at Boeing has outstripped all other costs

yet they have to pinch pennies on working peoples' back.

I could run Boeing into the ground for half the pay these clowns get for doing the same.

[Deja Q]

4. And once "crowdsourcing" becomes too expensive, we will have to pay them to work for them

[IDFbunny]

6. For breaking the SC union they will get lavish bonuses, raises, perkss

galore.

[aquart]

5. They ain't worth the money.

[Amonester]

7. Yes. But they sure know how to steal it.

And since nobody does anything to prevent them from stealing more each year... It's like a mafia or something.