Polly Toynbee opines in The Guardian that Prime Minister Theresa May has so far failed to follow through on pledges made in her pitch for the leadership regarding limits on exorbitant executive salaries.
Toynbee points out that, despite his scandal-plagued tenure, HSBC’s chief executive Stuart Gulliver was granted a raise by shareholders that brings his annual pay to nearly £8 million per year. At HSBC executive pay dwarfs the average worker’s pay by a ratio of 102:1.
Though HSBC has received little in the way of direct government assistance, it has received considerable indirect assistance in the form of the “Too Big to Fail” government guarantee of its solvency, which was valued at £7 billion in 2010, according to the New Economics Foundation.
Countering what they see as a failure of leadership on this issue, Labour has pledged to place a pay ratio cap on large corporations that serve as contractors to the government. Their plan would limit annual earnings to £350,000.
Click here to read Toynbee’s opinion piece: Theresa May promised to tackle greedy bosses – instead she’s helping them | Polly Toynbee | Opinion | The Guardian
