- Are London CEOs paid enough?
- It all depends on who you compare them with…
You could pity AstraZeneca (AZN) chief executive officer (CEO) Pascal Soriot. Despite delivering on financial targets and making progress on innovation, his 2023 pay package put him in the bottom quartile of his global pharma peers. No wonder the firm’s remuneration committee is looking to increase his total compensation, bringing Soriot closer to (though still below) the median for his global peer group.
But don’t feel too sorry for him. Soriot’s total remuneration last year was still £16.8mn, a figure the High Pay Centre think tank described as “excessive” and “unjustifiably high”. Spokesperson Andrew Speke said that Soriot has consistently been one of the highest paid CEOs in the FTSE 100, pointing out he earns around a thousand times more than a minimum wage worker and more than a hundred times more than many of his employees.