Sexism IN THE City
How the gender pay gap goes all the way to the very top of corporate Britain
A DAILY Mail investigation into boardroom pay has found that sexism remains rife at the top of corporate Britain. The same number of FTSE 100 companies in 2017 were run by men called David or Dave as by women and more than double the number of firms had a chairman called John than had a woman at the head of the boardroom table.
Women suffer a yawning gender pay gap as male chief executives earn more than twice as much on average as their female counterparts.
The entrenched inequality revealed by our investigation will come as a disappointment to the Prime Minister who has backed drives for more women in leaderdrugs ship positions and for equal pay. Only seven firms in the FTSE 100 last year were led by women, the same number as are run by a man called Dave or David.
Although well-paid by normal standards, female chief executives also suffer a gender pay gap, earning an average of £3m compared with £5.8m for the FTSE index overall.
It is impossible to make precise comparisons between male and female bosses because a number of factors can influence rewards, including experience, size of company and share price performance.
However, the gulf between male and female packages is so great it cannot be accounted for other than as a gender divide. Emma Walmsley, the chief executive of giant Glaxosmithkline, is only paid around half as much as Frenchman Pascal Soriot who leads rival Astrazeneca.
Unlike Walmsley, Soriot figures prominently in the ‘list of shame,’ ordered by Theresa May for companies who suffer a significant shareholder protest over rewards after 35pc of investors revolted against executive pay at Astra.
Walmsley, the only woman to make it into the top 25 best paid FTSE 100 chief executives for 2017, receives a much smaller pay packet than Soriot even though GSK is a larger company than Astrazeneca measured by stock market value. GSK’s share price for the past 12 months has not done as well as Astra’s, but Walmsley’s supporters point out she has only been in her job since last year so needs time for her presence to bear fruit.
Most of the other women – including Alison Brittain of Whitbread, Veronique Laury of Kingfisher and Moya Greene, the recently departed boss of Royal Mail – are also clustered towards the bottom of the FTSE pay table.
Tobacco boss Alison Cooper at Imperial Brands is another to be paid less than her male counterpart Nicandro Durante at BAT, whose rewards have also provoked shareholder protests.
The gender divide is equally bad at chairman level. Only six FTSE 100 companies were chaired by women in 2017: Susan Kilsby at drugs company Shire, Dame Alison Carnwath at property group Land Securities, Anita Frew at speciality chemicals group Croda, Annette Court at insurance company Admiral, Fiona McBain at Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Sarah Bates at financial advice giant St James’s Place. Deanna Oppenheimer has since been appointed chair of financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown. By contrast, 13 businesses are chaired by men called John or its variants Jan or Jean. Not content with one top job, three of these were chairing two FTSE 100 companies apiece. Jan du Plessis presides at Rio Tinto and BT, John Allan is chairman at Tesco and Barratt Developments and John McAdam chairs Rentokil and United Utilities.
As with female chief executives, there is a gender pay gap. Women chairing a board received pay of just over £300,000 on average compared with an overall average of around £475,000. Only one woman, Shire’s Kilsby, made it into the best paid 50 chairmen, and no woman earned more than £500,000, compared with 39 men.
The number of female chief executives edged up from five in 2015 to seven in 2017, but at that rate it will take 43 years to reach 50-50, the High Pay Centre said.
Outside of the FTSE 100 a couple of women have made enormous sums. Denise Coates, founder of privately-owned gambling group Bet 365, is Britain’s best-paid businesswoman. Her recent earnings totted up to £217m.
Avril Palmer-Baunack, boss of British Car Auctions, which runs the We Buy Any Car website, has been criticised over a £29m bonus. Advisory firm Glass Lewis called it ‘exceptionally disproportionate’.