01-03-2019

Documents reveal the bosses of Britain's biggest banks are paid on average 120 times more than the median pay of their UK employees, according to bank documents.

The widest pay difference is at Lloyds Banking Group, where chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio earns 169 times more than the median paid employee on £37,058. HSBC had the next biggest disparity, with CEO John Flint receiving a salary of £4.6 million, 118 times more than the median paid employee.

While Lloyds declined to comment, an HSBC spokeswoman told Reuters: “HSBC’s pay strategy is designed to appropriately reflect the role, responsibility and skills of the individual and to also be competitive in order to ensure we are able to attract and retain individuals with the appropriate skills for each role.”

New regulations came into force on 1 January 2019 requiring the UK’s biggest companies to disclose and explain every year their top bosses' pay and the gap between that and their average worker.

The pay ratio regulations make it a statutory requirement for UK listed companies with more than 250 employees to disclose annually the ratio of their CEO’s pay to the median, lower quartile and upper quartile pay of their UK employees. Companies will start reporting this in 2020 (covering CEO and employee pay awarded in 2019).


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