Bank documents reveal top bosses of Britain's biggest banks are paid on average 120 times more than the median pay of their UK employees, as new rule puts pay disparities at the country's big businesses under sharper scrutiny. Britain's biggest domestic lender Lloyds Banking Group has the biggest pay difference, with Chief Executive Antonio Horto-Osorio, the sector's highest-earning boss in 2018, on 169 times as much as the median paid employee on 37,058 pounds, the company's annual report showed last week.
The gap widens to 237 times when compared with staff in Lloyds' lowest pay quartile, who received an average pay package of 26,490 pounds in 2018, compared with the 6.3 million pounds Horta-Osorio earned. The banks made the disclosures alongside full-year results over the past fortnight, ahead of new reporting requirements coming into force next year that oblige firms to set out the ratio of CEO pay to a median UK employee and those in the lowest and upper pay quartiles. Banking giant HSBC had the next largest pay disparity, with new chief executive John Flint pocketing 4.6 million pounds last year, 118 times as much as its median paid employee in Britain.
A spokeswoman for the bank said, “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.” CEO to median employee pay ratios at rival FTSE 100 lenders Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays were not too far behind, at 97:1 and 96:1 respectively.
Lately, pay disparities have come under intense scrutiny in Britain, with separate gender pay-gap reporting requirements highlighting wide discrepancies between both genders, particularly in the finance industry. The pay ratio reporting comes as the City of London Corporation, which manages London's financial district, launched a campaign against low pay at financial firms last week. The body is urging companies to pay their staff at least the London Living Wage of 10.55 pounds per hour.
Catherine McGuinness, the City's policy chief, said, “One in five people employed in the capital don't earn a wage they can live on. I'm calling on City firms to help consign this statistic to the history books.” Meanwhile, in its annual report Lloyds said it would pay all its full-time staff a minimum salary of 17,500 pounds from April this year, which it said would mean a raise of up to 9.9 per cent for some colleagues.
