Fat cats pocket common annual wage first three days of 2025

Bosses at Britain’s biggest companies earned more in the first three days of 2025 than the average employee will take home in the entire year.

The news will reignite the row over ‘fat cat’ pay at a time when there are calls to give top executives even more money in order to attract the best to run the largest firms listed on the London stock market.

The typical FTSE 100 chief executive earned £4.7 million in 2023, the latest year for which full figures are available, according to The Mail on Sunday’s Fat Cat Files.

That sum is 125 times greater than the average worker’s annual earnings of £37,430.

But the headline figure masks some even bigger pay gaps.

The largest divide among blue chip firms is at Tesco, where chief executive Ken Murphy was paid nearly £10 million – 431 times the salary of the supermarket’s typical worker at £23,010 a year.

Money talks: Tesco boss Ken Murphy

It means Murphy earned more on New Year’s Day – when most Tesco stores were open – than his staff will for the rest of 2025.

Other retailers such as Sainsbury’s, Next and B&Q-owner Kingfisher also feature on the list, inset, where the pay gap is widest.

However, some say the bosses’ pay is not high enough. Firms such as plumbing giant Ferguson and Tarmac-owner CRH have already moved their main listing from London to Wall Street, where sky-high boardroom pay is more widely tolerated.

Cambridge-based chipmaker Arm Holdings opted to list in New York in the first place.

That has prompted warnings of a brain drain from business leaders such as London Stock Exchange chief executive Julia Hoggett, who has said ‘a lack of a level playing field’ was causing an exodus of firms from the City to New York and beyond.

Billionaire financier Lord Michael Spencer recently joined in, arguing the best bosses should be paid like ‘top-rate footballers’ without facing a backlash.

Tesco, which under Murphy’s leadership has increased its dominance of the grocery market, defended his award.

Alison Platt, chair of the remuneration committee, which sets executive pay, said at the time it recognised ‘the strong performance of the business’ and ‘the fact Tesco had delivered for all of its stakeholders over the last year’, including ‘record investment in colleague pay’.

As Prime Minister, Theresa May sought to tame ‘fat cat’ pay by forcing companies to disclose more information about their pay ratios.

In 2017, she described the behaviour of some company bosses as ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ in an article for The Mail on Sunday.

She launched a public register that named and shamed firms where a significant number of shareholders thought boardroom pay was too high.

However, greater disclosure has failed to curb growing pay differentials.

Critics say this cements workplace inequality, especially as real wages have stagnated since the financial crisis of 2008-9 with average earnings struggling to keep pace with rising prices.