Pay for the directors of the UK’s top businesses rose 50% over the past year, a pay research company has said.
Incomes Data Services (IDS) said this took the average pay for a director of a FTSE 100 company to just short of £2.7m.
The rise, covering salary, benefits and bonuses, was higher than that recorded for the main person running the company, the chief executive.
Their pay rose by 43% over the year, according to the study.
Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking in Australia, said the report was “concerning” and called for big companies to be more transparent when they decide executive pay.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said the pay increases were part of a “something for nothing” culture, since the stock market had not risen to match them.
A statement from IDS said that that figure suggested that “executive largesse is evenly spread across the board”.
Base salaries rose by just 3.2%, although that was above the median rise recorded by IDS this week for average pay settlements of 2.6% for private sector workers.
The latest consumer price inflation figures showed inflation at 5.2%.
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