These are the UK’s top-paid CEOs as exec salaries hit record high

The bosses of Britain’s biggest listed companies took home record salaries in the latest financial year, according to a new report.

Median pay among FTSE 100 chief executive officers was £4.58 million ($6.2 million) in the year to March 31, the High Pay Centre found — up from £4.29 million in the 2023-2024 financial year and the highest figure since companies have been required to disclose a single figure for CEO pay, in 2013.

Mean bonus payments meanwhile increase to £1.61 million from £1.48 million, the think tank said.

CNBC has not independently verified the figures in the report. The High Pay Centre’s report does not include privately-held companies, meaning it does not reflect all of the the U.K.’s top earners.

The average U.K. full-time worker earned £37,430 last year, or 122 times less than the typical FTSE 100 chief. That gap is even higher in the U.S., where the bosses of the biggest listed companies made around 290 times that of the average worker in 2023, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.

No women feature in this year’s list of top 10 FTSE 100 earners. The High Pay Centre said a total of nine female CEOs served for the entire financial year across the index, with median pay of £3.27 million, below the £4.64 million for companies run for the full year by a man.

The U.K.’s highest-paid female executive is widely understood to be Denise Coates, head of online gambling firm Bet365 Group, whose salary totaled £94.66 million last year, according to company accounts.

Since 2019, London-listed companies with over 250 employees have had to disclose the ratio between the pay of their CEO and their average worker and make disclosures to justify the salaries of top bosses.

Using this “single figure” disclosure, which typically includes base salary, bonus, pension, and short- and long-term performance incentives, the highest-paid CEOs in the U.K. were: