“BREATHTAKING CYNICISM”

by RAY FLEMING
THE Guardian's annual survey of boardroom pay in Britain makes for infuriating reading. True, the survey is for 2008 but it surely can be assumed that top businessmen would have been aware of darkening economic clouds sooner than the rest ot us and might therefore have taken measures to batten down the hatches rather than opening the champagne bottles. The crude statistics in the survey show that, while company profits in 2008 fell by 31 per cent and the FTSE 100 index had a similar decline, the remuneration of FTSE directors increased by 10 per cent. There are some horror stories in the details of individuals such as Bart Becht, the CEO of Reckitt Benckiser (Harpic, Veet and Strepsils) whose total remuneration rose to 36.8 million pounds and who has been paid 80 million pounds in the past three years. The survey contains details of many cases where failure in difficult conditions was interpreted as success and rewarded accordingly.