Britain’s corporate pay league table has just seen a major shake-up.
Pascal Soriot, long known as the FTSE 100’s highest-paid chief executive, has been dethroned.
The man replacing him at the top spot is far less of a household name — but his pay packet certainly isn’t.
Peter Dilnot, who runs aerospace engineering giant Melrose, quietly soared past the competition last year to claim the crown.
Alongside his predecessor, Simon Peckham, Dilnot was part of a payout worth over £100 million — one of the largest in UK corporate history.
The Former Army Pilot Who Now Tops the Pay Charts
Dilnot, 55, brings a very different background to the boardroom — Sandhurst-trained and a former army helicopter pilot, he’s now the head of a business that specialises in reviving underperforming industrial firms.
Last year, he pocketed a staggering £45 million, with £43 million of that coming as a one-off bonus from a share scheme agreed five years ago.
That plan paid out a total of £208 million to him and three fellow executives after they smashed performance targets.
But while the bonuses delighted the board, almost two-thirds of Melrose shareholders opposed the awards, branding them excessive.
Executive Pay Reaches Record Levels
The Mail on Sunday’s “Fat Cat Files” survey found total pay for FTSE 100 bosses has smashed through the £500 million mark for the first time.
On average, each top executive earned £5.5 million in 2024 — an 11% jump from the previous year, and more than double the rate of the average UK pay rise.
Melrose also overtook Tesco as the company with the biggest pay gap between its boss and a typical employee.
How the Former Number One Slipped
Pascal Soriot’s reign at the top came after AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine success and a strong run in its drug portfolio.
But last year, his pay dropped from £16.9 million to £14.7 million, largely because the company’s share price stalled.
That opened the door for not just Dilnot, but also Omar Abbosh — the new chief executive of education publisher Pearson — to leapfrog him.
Abbosh took home £16.3 million, with most of that coming from a payout to buy him out of his Microsoft contract.
Winners and Losers in the Pay Stakes
Not all top bosses enjoyed the same windfall. Rolls-Royce chief Tufan Erginbilgic saw his pay tumble by nearly £10 million, despite a strong year for the company’s share price.
Without a repeat of the one-off £7.5 million payment he’d received for lost earnings from his BP role, his total dropped to £4.1 million.
Meanwhile, Emma Walmsley remained the highest-paid female boss in the FTSE 100, even though her pay at GlaxoSmithKline dipped from £12.7 million to £10.6 million.
With a new US-style pay package in place, she could earn as much as £22 million this year.
The Eye-Watering Pay Gap at Melrose
Melrose’s pay awards made headlines not just for their size, but for the stark gap they revealed.
Company filings show Dilnot and Peckham earned 1,112 times more than the average Melrose employee, who took home £53,000.
In other words, the pair made more in a single morning than their workers did in a year.
Peckham, who stepped down in March 2024, received almost £58 million.
Fellow directors Christopher Miller and Geoffrey Martin collected £50 million and £57 million respectively under the same incentive plan.
Dilnot is now the only one of the four still with the company.
How Melrose Turned Its Fortunes Around
Melrose’s success is tied to a bold strategy of acquiring struggling industrial firms and turning them around.
Its 2018 purchase of defence and aerospace giant GKN transformed the business, helping it grow to a market value of £7.5 billion.
A more recent demerger of GKN’s automotive arm into a separate listed company, Dowlais, gave its share price an extra lift — and made that enormous bonus scheme possible.
A Pay Row That Echoes Past Corporate Controversies
The backlash to Melrose’s payouts was one of the biggest investor rebellions in recent memory.
The revolt brought to mind the public outcry in 2018 over the £75 million bonus for Persimmon’s Jeff Fairburn, which ultimately cost him his job.
This time, the Melrose vote was advisory rather than binding, so the awards went ahead despite shareholder protests.
The Bigger Picture — Is London Losing Its Edge?
While some argue these huge bonuses are excessive, others in the City believe the real issue is that UK executive pay is too low compared with global standards.
AstraZeneca, valued at nearly £175 billion, is one of several blue-chip firms considering moving its primary stock market listing to New York — partly because US pay packages are seen as far more competitive.
