Pay for bosses in Britain falls far behind America. Tough luck

BRITAIN’S BOSSES are in a funk. Last year, one-tenth of the CEOs running FTSE 350 companies stood down, more than double the tally for 2021. The number of listed companies in London has fallen by two-fifths since 2008. Some of the country’s most treasured companies, such as Arm, a chip designer, are defecting to Wall Street.

Many factors lie behind the malaise. Could relatively paltry pay for those in charge be a big one? At first glance, yes. America’s top earners are vastly better rewarded than those in Britain. Take the extraordinary case of Laxman Narasimhan, who used to run Reckitt Benckiser, a London-listed consumer-goods giant. In that job, in 2021, he got by (somehow or other) while earning £4.7m ($6.5m), excluding his deferred bonus. When he decamped last year to become the CEO of Starbucks he accepted a package, over $28m, that more than quadrupled his compensation.