Top 100 CEOs will earn average worker's salary by lunchtime

The top 100 highest-paid CEOs in Canada will have earnt the average Canadian salary by lunchtime today, an annual report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has found.

The average Canadian CEO salary in 2014 was $8.96million (£4.36million), which is 184 times the average 2014 Canadian salary of $48,636 (£23,674). The 98 men and two women that comprised the 100 made the average pay packet of an employee on the minimum wage by 2pm on New Year’s Day, which is a paid holiday.   

Hugh Mackenzie, a Research Associate at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, studied proxy circulars of the 249 publicly-listed Canadian corporations on the Toronto Stock Exchange. He said: “What really struck me more than anything else — given the fact that the Canadian economy was already quite weak and commodity prices were already deteriorating in 2014 — was the resilience of CEO compensation.”

The bulk of the CEOs on the list made over $9million (£4.4million) via a combination of bonuses, stock options, and pensions.