Chief Executives' Pay
In January...Chris O'Shea, the chief executive of Centrica (the owner of British Gas said his £4.5m pay package was "impossible to justify" and "so there's no point in trying to do that." In 2016, the then CEO of the Co-Op group, Richard Pennycook, sought a 60% cut in his pay package as, he argued, his job had got simpler after a restructuring... These admissions cause embarrassment and are not the story the business elite want to tell. Right now, in fact, pleas for even bigger and better pay packages are being heard in the city. Julia Hogget, the CEO of the London Stock Exchange, has said that CEOs are getting paid at levels that are "significantly below global benchmarks". She fears an exodus of businesses and executives who feel greater rewards will be found elsewhere, especially in the US, where top CEO's pay is on average about three times the level to be found at FTSE 100 companies. The High Pay Centre reports that, in 2022, the UK's