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.
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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?
Politics of envy, I hear you ask? In my view, there’s not enough envy around. Or outrage.
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