The executive pay explosion

The introduction of board-level executive pay disclosures has, paradoxically, resulted in a colossal rise in salaries

One of the paradoxes of pay transparency for directors of publicly quoted companies has been that, since it was made mandatory decades ago, it has been followed by the biggest ever pace of real pay increases for chief executives and other directors of stock market listed corporations – increases out of all proportion to the increase in returns to shareholders. It’s a good example of the unintended consequences of regulation.

It is an ...