London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025

Executive pay system is broken, says Church of England’s pension board

Executive pay system is broken, says Church of England’s pension board

Board calls out excessive pay on day Next approved 50% pay rise for its chief executive

The system of executive pay is “broken”, the Church of England’s pension board has said, as it challenged more companies to ease the pain of soaring inflation by committing to paying workers the living wage.

On the day retailer Next approved a 50% pay rise for its chief executive, Adam Matthews, the Church’s chief responsible investment officer, called out examples of “excessive pay” at large companies in a post on LinkedIn.

On Thursday, shareholders in Next backed the company’s decision to reward Simon Wolfson with £4.4m this year, the highest level since 2015, despite opposition from some investors concerned about the disparity between executives and the wider workforce.

Matthews, who manages £3bn of investments, voted his shares against the increase. Explaining the decision, he wrote: “We can sound off on radio and vote against but we need to recognise that fundamentally the executive pay system we have isn’t working.

“This is particularly egregious at a time that many of the workers in many of these companies will be struggling with the growing costs of living. You have major increases in executive pay in consumer facing companies such as Next where the workforce are not accredited as being on a living wage.”

A spokesperson for Next said: “Given the challenges facing the retail sector, Next does not anticipate increasing wages above the national living wage as it prioritises protecting jobs.”

Companies which are accredited as living wage employers have committed to paying all of their employees a rate based on living costs, which stands at £9.90 an hour across the UK, and £11.05 in London.

Matthews said he would be inviting the board chairs and chairs of remuneration committees, and meeting with other fund managers, to discuss reforms.

He added: “There is a societal crisis unfolding before us and in the UK you have over three-quarters of churches involved in supporting foodbanks that are not just providing food to people out of work but those in work that cannot make ends meet. So as a pension fund we will be convening a meeting of asset owners, with key fund managers to look at this broken system that is enabling excess.”

His comments followed a warning on Wednesday from Martin Lewis, founder of the consumer advice site Money Saving Expert, that financial desperation could lead to “civil unrest”.

Households already struggling with soaring food and energy bills face a further hit when the energy price cap rises for the second time this year in October.

“The public mood is desperate, it’s angry and we may well be moving towards, if we don’t sort this when those bills rises come in October to £2,600 in the middle of winter, I worry about civil unrest,” he told ITV’s Peston programme.

The Institutional Voting Information Service (IVIS), which is part of the Investment Association and advises investors on corporate governance, had marked Next’s annual remuneration report with a “red top” warning, suggesting that shareholders vote against.

Despite the opposition, just 7.5% of shareholders challenged the plan to pay Wolfson an annual bonus worth 100% of his basic salary and two share bonuses based on long-term performance.

Activists from Share Action and Labour Behind the Label who attended Next’s AGM in Leicester, the centre of the UK’s garment-making industry, asked the company’s executives why workers in factories which supply garments to Next were not paid the living wage.

They reported that Wolfson listened carefully to them, but did not promise change.

Other firms including the owner of Wagamama, the Restaurant Group, have also come in for criticism in recent weeks over executive bonuses. The group – which also owns the Frankie & Benny’s and Chiquito chains – paid its chief executive, Andy Hornby, £1.2m last year up, up from £518,000 a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Tesco has been criticised for paying its chief executive £4.75m last year, including the highest annual bonus awarded by the supermarket since 2016, at a time when families are being hit by soaring food price inflation.

Despite this, Matthews wrote there was rarely widespread backlash from investors: “There are occasional rebellions of shareholders, but then attention diverts and we all waste our time trying to decipher ever complicated justifications for excessive pay.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
×