News from the High Pay Centre – the revolutionary guard of left-wing thinktanks – that average FTSE100 chief executive pay rose 16 per cent to a record £5.9 million for 2024-25 comes as a double blessing for Rachel Reeves. On the one hand, she can cite executive greed as a pretext for her forthcoming autumn tax raid, while at the same time claiming that if rewards are soaring, then business conditions under Labour can’t be as bad as boardroom whingers say. On the other, she can rejoice that each UK-domiciled boss is contributing to the Exchequer a sum roughly equal to the tax take from 440 average earners.
Meanwhile, is the near-£6 million benchmark justified in itself? The High Pay Centre, declaring itself ‘for fairer pay, worker voice and better business’, clearly thinks not. But if the boss class’s prime task is to deliver shareholder value, then a 15 per cent rise in the FTSE index since April last year suggests the pay hike isn’t too far out of proportion. And let’s get real: these 100 chiefs are mostly drawn from a global talent pool in which the US sets the pace, with average packages at S&P500 companies equivalent to £14 million. Put another way, US corporate titans earn 285 times their average worker’s pay, compared with 122 times in the UK.
And some pundits argue that relatively low senior pay – implying an inability to recruit the best and general lack of thrust – is one reason why London-listed companies tend to be undervalued by international comparisons. For the growth of the economy, the global stature of the City and the health of our pensions, we’d all like to see them revalued upwards. If that means making fat cats fatter, noxious though it may sometimes be, it’s what fuels the jet engines of capitalism.
Title bingo
I may be less puritanical than I used to be on top pay, but I’m increasingly offended by job title inflation. An American was introduced to me at a recent London party as ‘chairman of Barclays’: since he didn’t look or sound like Nigel Higgins, the British ex-Rothschild executive who actually holds that post, I was intrigued. Research revealed that my new acquaintance was one of seven ‘global chairmen of banking’, reporting to the ‘chair of the global chairmen’s group’, who presumably reports to the chief executive, who reports to Higgins.
Meanwhile I read that J.P. Morgan has hired more than 300 bankers since early 2024, ‘nearly a third of those roles [being] at managing director level’. Beware, is all I can say. In the declining days of my own banking career, I migrated from ‘head of international corporate finance’ with no one reporting to me to divisional ‘chief operating officer’ with no decision-making power, to ‘managing director’ with almost no job at all. And then they sacked me.
Sell Lilly, buy Greggs
How many hedgies were smart enough to short Greggs of Newcastle at the same time as they took long punts on Novo Nordisk of Denmark and Eli Lilly of Indianapolis? The latter duo, leaders so far of the weight-loss drug bonanza as the makers respectively of Ozempic (also sold as Wegovy) and Mounjaro, saw their share prices multiply as the trend caught fire with body-conscious consumers.
Nordisk stock has fallen back from its peak as Lilly’s challenge has accelerated, but both have hugely outperformed the indices – and market-watchers are wondering whether the mini-boom has run its course, given pressure from President Donald Trump for cheaper drugs in the US and the likelihood that other players, as yet unidentified, will launch competitive products that claim fewer side-effects. Accordingly, both shares have become hyper-sensitive to news items and investor swings – though buy-the-dip tipsters still favour Lilly.
What’s Greggs got to do with it? The share price of the northern FTSE250 pastry chain has halved in the past year as customers jumped on the weight-loss wagon and cut out the sausage rolls – but the company has launched a fightback with ‘smaller portions and protein-rich alternatives’ for the Mounjaro market. ‘Sell Eli Lilly, buy Greggs’ would be a brave contrarian trade; but who knows, it might be the next winner.
Too many foreigners
A hot topic here in France is the plague of surtourisme. In short, as in many parts of Europe, too many damned foreigners crowding everywhere, landing from cruise ships and, according to one report, leaving ‘dispossessed’ residents rarely hearing a word of spoken French. The solution is likely to be quotas, obligatory pre-booking and higher entry fees for sensitive sites. But in the rural Dordogne, not so bad: mine was the only non-French party at this week’s hunt feast, served by local farmers who I sense care nought for economic swings or tourist surges so long as crops grow and there are boar to be shot (a big one – boar, not farmer – trots across the orchard as I write).
It is, however, harder to book good restaurants this season. Hence, as several readers have complained, a paucity of my usual tips – so I’ve exercised my own surtourisme by harvesting a selection from Brits dotted around the Michelin map. Here, at speed, is my 2025 tour de France.
In Normandy, La Source in Veules-les-Roses is for oyster-lovers and Le Drakkar at Deauville is for jet-setters. In Haut Vienne, L’Estaminet du Château at Rochechouart is for anyone keen on carpaccio of pig’s trotter. If you’re in Avignon and have won the lottery, enjoy eight courses at La Mirande. In Vaucluse, seek out the hidden gem of La Bartavelle in Goult; in Luberon, go upmarket to La Bergerie de Capelongue in Bonnieux but remember the ‘de facto dress code is soirée blanche’. Back in the Dordogne, my own value lunch pick is Auberge de la Nauze at Sagelat; if you really like it, the whole place is for sale.
And after so much gourmandising, we’d all be wise to refocus on weight loss.
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