Pay for FTSE 100 bosses down almost 20% in a year

The median pay for a FTSE 100 chief executive has fallen by almost 20% over the past year, according to audit firm Deloitte.

Median pay, which stood at £4.3m in 2016, dropped to £3.5m this year as the number of CEOs receiving a pay increase of over 3% has halved since last year.

The figures, which are included in a preview of Deloitte's annual FTSE 100 remuneration report, come after a number of high-profile companies faced shareholder revolts over their levels of executive pay.

Perhaps the most notable of these has been WPP (Frankfurt: A1J2BZ - news) , the global advertising agency, whose top boss Sir Martin Sorrell has received the highest pay packet of any FTSE 100 boss for the past several years.

Sir Martin took a pay cut of more than £20m last year after his £70.4m remuneration package in 2015 caused sizeable protest among the company's shareholders.

Stephen Cahill, vice-chairman at Deloitte, said: "The fall in executive pay demonstrates that remuneration committees are making a real effort to address shareholder concerns.

"We are beginning to see signs that overall pay may be falling, particularly in the largest companies."

The figures echo a recent report by the High Pay Centre and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), which found that average pay packages for chief executives had fallen from £5.4m to £4.5m.

But that research found that the pay decline had come as the gap between executive wages and the amount earned by an average worker had grown considerably.

It would now take a typical UK employee 160 years to rake in the average annual amount awarded to the average FTSE 100 boss.