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  1. Politics
14 September 2009

Rewarding hard work?

Executive pay is unfair, undeserved and out of control

By Mehdi Hasan

The Guardian’s front-page “special report” focuses on how pay for executives at Britain’s top companies has leapt 10 per cent over the past year, despite their companies losing almost a third of their value in the wake of the worst financial crisis in living memory.

One corporate example, in particular, stood out to me:

The best-paid boardroom last year was that of Tullow Oil, a London-based oil exploration business, where 11 directors picked up a total of £59m. Most of their gains came from share options, as they cashed in on a share price that had soared along with the oil price. The directors made much more from their cheap share handouts than the rest of the 470-strong workforce were paid in the year.

So much for the argument that businessmen who rake in obscenly large salaries on the back of huge company profits deserve the money as a reward for their hard work. Why should the bosses at Tullow Oil — including the chief executive and founder, Aidan Heavey, who took home an eye-watering £28.8m last year — benefit so disproportionately from something as arbitary and uncontrollable as a record oil price? And why are we not taxing them more, in the middle of a recession, a time when politicians on all sides can’t stop banging on about the need for spending cuts?

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