'Fat Cat Thursday' sees pay of top UK CEOs already pass annual average for workers

The average boss of one of Britain’s top companies will on Thursday have earned the same as the typical worker will make in the entire year, according to a new report, stepping up pressure on companies ahead of the annual reporting season. 

Just three working days into 2018, pay for the average FTSE 100 chief executive will pass the median worker salary of 28,758 pounds, the report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and pressure group the High Pay Centre showed.

And that is despite the mean pay of FTSE 100 CEOs falling by about 17 percent in 2017 to 4.5 million pounds amid pressure from investors, the government and wider society for excessive pay to be reined in.

Even with that pay cut, the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the average full-time worker is still 120:1, the report on “Fat Cat Thursday” showed, with the best-paid boss - advertising company WPP’s (WPP.L) Martin Sorrell - on 48.2 million pounds. 

Online competitors take on global banks in securities research shake-up

A period of severe turmoil is facing the securities research industry as a regulatory overhaul threatens the way investment research is done.

Online portals, in particular, are set to gain market share at the expense of major "bulge bracket" investment banks, reaching a forecasted market share of $1.4 billion or 15 percent of the global investment research industry spend by 2020 - from less than 1 percent last year.

"The global investment research market is on the cusp of major disruption," said Benjamin Quinlan, CEO of Hong Kong-based Quinlan & Associates and author of a report on the challenges facing the research sector.

Forcing the change are new rules, known as Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, or MiFID II, due to take effect in January 2018 aiming to make European securities markets more transparent.

A key aspect of these rules is that investment banks must charge fund managers an explicit fee for research rather than bundling the cost into trading commissions charged to clients, as at present.

Though banks have scrambled to reorganize their research functions by focusing on top-tier clients to minimize costs, rolling out proprietary portals, or adopting a model where clients pay for research depending on what they need, analysts say the sheer volume produced on a daily basis means the research effort has a long way to go before becoming efficient.