It’s not just left-wingers who think the bosses’ pay boom is unhealthy

The FTSE100 index stands precisely where it did in the first week of December 1999. Whichever way you look at it, shareholders — including pension funds — have had a rotten run on the economic rollercoaster of the past 15 years. So it’s reasonable to keep asking whether the rise in executive pay over that same period is justified: a report from the High Pay Centre says remuneration of the average FTSE100 chief executive is now at a multiple of 130 times (corrected from the report’s original figure of 143 times) that of the average worker in the same companies. In 1998 that multiple was 47, indicating that top pay has almost tripled relative to workforce earnings while shareholder returns have stayed flat. Of course this argument is not that simple. There was undoubtedly a time, before the Thatcher revolution, when British company chiefs were miserably under-rewarded; what has happened since is a long pendulum swing chasing US-led norms applicable to ‘global’ companies.