CRH and AstraZeneca bosses among best paid in UK
CRH boss Albert Manifold was the third highest paid boss of a Ftse-100 company last year, according to a new report.
The chief executives of Irish building materials giant CRH and Covid vaccine maker AstraZeneca were amongst the highest-paid bosses of UK-listed companies last year, according to a report.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot was Britain's highest-paid company boss in 2020, a year when the average Ftse-100 leader saw their pay fall by almost a fifth.
Mr Soriot, whose handling of the pandemic response has drawn criticism despite the company producing its vaccine at cost price, took home £15.45m (€18m), a report by UK think-tank, the High Pay Centre said.
Rounding out the top five earners were Experian's Brian Cassin, with £10.3m; CRH's Albert Manifold, with £9.92m; Reckitt Benckiser's Laxman Narasimhan, with £9.24m, and Berkeley's Rob Perrins, with £8.03m, the report said.
That compares with median pay for CEOs in Britain's flagship stock index of £2.69m, down from £3.25m in 2019, the report found, but still 86 times the median earnings for the average UK worker.
Shareholders had demanded bosses share the financial pain as companies across a range of sectors experienced a tough year, with lockdowns in many countries hitting sales.
The proportion of companies paying bonuses dropped to 64% from 89% in 2019, while 77% paid out long-term incentives based on performance over the previous 3-5 years, compared to 82% the previous year.
Of the nine companies which took public money through the British government's furlough scheme, the average CEO pay was £2.2m.
"CEO pay packages are designed to reflect the experience of shareholders, employees and other stakeholders, so in one sense the lower pay levels this year show the system working as intended," said High Pay Centre director Luke Hildyard.
"On the other hand, these are still very generous rewards...at a time when, in general, government support for the economy has probably been more important to the survival and success of the UK's biggest companies than the decisions of their executives."
CRH weathered the Covid storm remarkably well last year, with earnings rising 5% to $4.6bn (€3.8bn) and group revenues only falling by 2% to $27.6bn. Pre-tax profit fell from $2.2bn to $1.7bn.
The company is in the midst of an ongoing share buyback programme and has returned around €2.2bn to shareholders since 2018.
Only 60% of AstraZeneca shareholders voted in favour of Mr Soriot’s improved pay package at the drug giant’s May agm. Large corporations typically win about 90% support for their pay in annual votes, making narrow-win results such as AstraZeneca's effectively a call to review the programme and talk to shareholders.
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