IEA Editorial and Research Fellow Professor Len Shackleton has written for The Spectator criticising the High Pay Centre’s annual announcement of the time taken for the average FTSE 100 CEO to earn as much as the nationwide average annual salary.

Len wrote:

“FTSE-100 CEOs are paid roughly in line with their counterparts in other similar European countries such as Germany and France, though considerably less than equivalents in the USA. Much high pay in all countries is now performance-linked in one way or another.

“…this pay gap pales into insignificance compared with that for some other top earners. Footballer Jack Grealish has been in the news recently as a result of a break-in at his luxury home. The Manchester City midfielder is currently paid £300,000 a week, which means that he earns the average working person’s annual salary in one morning’s training session. 

“If we somehow stopped these people earning large amounts, many of them – footballers or CEOs – would leave the country; a high proportion of both are foreign nationals and are here for the money, not the weather and Saturday night TV.”

Read Len’s full piece here.