UK
directors are not the "fat cats" that the public has been led to believe and are
constrained by the same wage considerations as everyone else, claims research
by the Institute of Directors.
According
to their latest survey of director’s pay, the average wage of a UK director is £63,000 per annum.
Furthermore,
the average pay rise for the past 12 months was just 4 per cent, a figure only
slightly above inflation and very much in line with the rest of the workforce.
Nearly
4,500 directors and
director-level executives in organisations with up to £500m turnover were
questioned in the survey.
Of
these, 46 per cent had
received wage increases of 3 per cent or less in the past year.
More
than half of the chairmen of small and medium companies had pay packages
totalling under £97,000.
George
Cox, director general of the Institute of Directors, said, "The headline-grabbing
stories about ‘fat cats’ give a totally distorted picture of life in the average
British boardroom. Very high rewards are the exception and, as one might
expect, confined to the very largest of companies.
"The
problem is that the publicity the latter attracts damages confidence in
business leadership generally and is in danger of distorting public
policy."
The
IoD findings follow a report by Income Data Services, which claimed salaries of
FTSE 100 chief executives had increased by almost 15 per cent in the 12 months
to June.
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