CEO Pay in FTSE 100: Pay Inequality, Board Size and Performance

Abstract:     
n this paper we examine the agency costs of seemingly excessive pay awards to CEO's within the FTSE 100 in the last decade. Are CEOs taking a large proportion of the total pot (a big "pay slice") more, or less, able to return value to shareholders by better management? In presenting this evidence we describe variations in whole distribution of executive pay, rather than invoking some arbitrary cut-off point (e.g. the CEO's pay as a percentage of their five highest paid peers or the CPS), to determine how changes in shareholder value match to concurrent changes in the distribution of executive pay. We ask is the impact of executive pay-inequality a function of board size, rendering the CPS measure problematic in this context? If so how does the interaction of board size and corporate performance size, as measured by shareholder returns, explain variation in the sensitivity of the pay-performance relationship for UK FTSE executives? We advance the Gini coefficient as a preferable measure of executive pay inequality in order to capture the impact of perceived inequality upon corporate performance.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 59

Keywords: managerial remuneration, inequality, corporate performance

JEL Classification: M52

working papers series