The median pay for FTSE bosses increased by 11 per cent last year, with reward increases for chief executives outstripping pay rises for the wider workforce.
The figure was published in the annual review of executive pay carried out by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD).
The recent research carried out by CIPD and the High Pay Centre has revealed that the FTSE 100 CEO median pay stood at £3.93m a year in 2017, an increase on £3.53m in the previous year.
Between 2016 and 2017, while there was an 11 per cent increase in chief executive median pay, the median wages earned by full-time workers only rose by 2 per cent during the same period.
These big pay cheque increases came despite growing shareholder unrest, with Royal Mail, BT and WPP all facing activist shareholders rebelling against chief executive pay at annual general meetings this year.
Meanwhile the government has attempted to end unequal pay in Britain's big corporations by requiring large UK listed companies to publish and justify the pay gap between chief executives and staff, and explain how share price rises will impact future executive pay, from 2020.
Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD, said: "Despite increased investor activism and the planned introduction of pay ratio reporting, the evidence suggests that very little is changing when it comes to top pay in the UK.
"It is disappointing to see that CEO pay has held up in the face of increasing pressure when average pay across the workforce has barely shifted in recent years. However, pressure is building in the system.
"Given the ongoing issues of trust in big businesses and a push for greater transparency, it really is time businesses and boards put greater scrutiny on high pay, and that they think much more objectively about what they are rewarding CEOs and how.
"Financial performance alone does not signify CEO success, and must be balanced with development of the organisations long-term sustainability and value. Investors and boards need to look beyond share price, and consider a much broader range of indicators that show how that individual is performing for the long-term good of the business, its workforce and other stakeholders."
The report also showed chief executive mean pay across all FTSE 100 companies had increased by 23 per cent from £4.58m in 2016 to £5.66m in 2017.
This year’s analysis was affected by bonus payouts for the chief executives at Persimmon and Melrose Industries, where they received £47.1m and £42.8m respectively.
Excluding those two businesses from the analysis, the report said, the 2017 mean chief executive figure would fall from £5.66m to £4.85m.
But this was still higher than the overall mean figure for 2017, showing a continued trend of rising executive pay.
The mean pay ratio between FTSE 100 chief executives and the mean pay package of their employees was 145:1, which is higher than in 2016 when the ratio was 128:1.
The highest paid chief executive in the financial year ending 2017 was Jeff Fairburn of Persimmon who received 22 times his 2016 pay with a sum of £47.1m.
rosie.quigley@ft.com
