Heads of largest British companies earn 183 times more than average worker

Directors of the largest British companies were paid 183 times more than the average worker, according to data for last year published by the High Pay Centre, reports the Patria news agency.

The average salary of directors of companies listed on the London Stock Exchange's FTSE 100 index was 4.96 million pounds last year, while in 2010 chief executives earned an average of 4.13 million pounds, or 160 times more than workers, writes Bloomberg.

The gap between worker and director salaries is an increasingly important topic among politicians in the US and the UK. Research by the AFL-CIO union in the US showed that directors of the 350 largest companies in the S&P 500 stock index earned 330 times more than workers in 2013, while in 1983 that ratio was 46 to 1.

"Such high salaries are far from what is reasonable and necessary to reward and motivate chief executives," says Deborah Hargreaves, director of the High Pay Centre, Index reported.