'Fat cat' bosses get staggering 33% pay rise and now earn 200 times average worker

Britain's top bosses scooped average pay rises of a staggering 33 per cent last year, a report revealed today.

Their massive pay rise means a typical top executive enjoyed an average pay package of £4.6million.

With this amount of money, they could use just one year's pay package to buy around 23 "average" homes - without needing to get a mortgage.

At this extraordinary level, a boss is typically getting more than 200 times the paltry handout given to the average private sector worker.

Official figures show a typical worker got a 3.7 per cent pay rise, although many got even less.

The findings will spark fury among their workers, crippled by the fatal combination of poor pay rises and inflation-busting increases in household bills.

The report, from the pay consultancy MM&K, highlights the huge gulf between pay at the top of the corporate ladder and the bottom.

Over the last decade, it says the average pay package of a chief executive of a FTSE 100 company has shot up nearly 300 per cent.

But, for their workers, it is a very different story.

They had to make do with just 47 per cent, according to the report.

A typical private sector worker has to survive on just £22,825 a year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This makes paying soaring food, energy and petrol bills almost impossible, with experts warning record numbers will be plunged into insolvency this year.

The report concludes: "Directors did significantly better than shareholders and employees."

The massive pay rises come at a time when the controversial issue of "fat cat" executives is particularly sensitive due to the economic crisis.

Earlier this week, the head of the CBI, the business lobby group, urged bosses to only pay themselves as much as they truly think they are worth.

Martin Broughton, chairman of the CBI, who is also chairman of British Airways, said leadership means "not paying ourselves more than we deserve".

In a rare example of corporate restraint, the airline's chief executive Willie Walsh turned down a £700,000 bonus in a personal sacrifice for the Terminal 5 fiasco.

But, for most bosses, restraint is not a word that they understand, or bother to do anything about.

The report comes in the week that senior European Union policymakers attacked executive pay awards as "scandalous".

The MM&K report looked at the total pay, such as salary, bonus, pension and share awards, of the bosses of the 30 biggest public companies in Britain.