CAC 40 CEOs earned 130 times more than their employees in 2022, denounces an Oxfam report

According to the NGO, between 2019 and 2022, the remuneration of the CEOs of the 40 most important companies on the Paris Stock Exchange “increased by 27%” while the average salary within these groups “only increased by 9 %”.

CAC 40 CEOs earned on average 130 times more than their employees in 2022, revealed Tuesday, April 30, a report from the NGO Oxfam. This figure is an increase compared to 2019 when big bosses earned on average 111 times more than their employees. Oxfam denounces CEO remuneration which reached “stratospheric levels”.

This report was published the day before May 1st by Oxfam which “recalls that it is the employees who create the wealth of CAC 40 companies. It is therefore unacceptable to see CEOs earning 130, 500 or even almost 1,500 times more than their employees”. At the same time, the report points out the increasing weight taken by shareholders who in 2022, “CAC 40 companies paid out on average 75% of their profits”.

Between 2019 and 2022, the remuneration of the CEOs of the 40 most important companies on the Paris Stock Exchange “increased by 27%”or on average, more than 6.6 million euros, while the average salary within these groups “only increased by 9%”. Oxfam denounces “double speed system” Who “increases the gap between bosses and employees”. At the same time, poverty in France is increasing sharply, “now affecting 14.5% of the population, or more than 9 million people, and more women than men, including 25%” are poor workers, warns Oxfam.

This situation is all the more incomprehensible since the employees “have lost a lot” in purchasing power since the Covid-19 crisis, comments Oxfam, since “real wages should only recover” This year “their level of 2019”according to projections from the Bank of France, recalls this study.

“A lack of regulation”

This investigation delivers its results in what the NGO describes as the “podium of indecency” with in first position, the company Téléperformance, “which reinforces its status as champion of indecent pay gaps since its CEO Daniel Julien earned in 2022, 1,453 times more than the average salary of the company”. This manager earned more than 19 million euros while the average annual salary in the company was 13,568 euros.

In second place, the CEO of Carrefour, Alexandre Bompard, with more than 9 million euros in remuneration, a gap of 426 times more than the average salary within his group which is 21,925 euros. Closes the podium, Stellantis whose CEO Carlos Tavares earned 341 times more than the average salary, 64,000 euros, thanks to a remuneration of more than 21 million euros in 2022. Carlos Tavares’s salary in 2023 is 36.5 million of euros created controversy. “If you think it’s not acceptable, make a law.”had launched the boss of Stellantis in the face of criticism.

Oxfam denounces “a lack of regulation of executive remuneration”, while solutions exist, particularly in the public sector, in companies where the State is the majority shareholder and where managers cannot earn more than 450,000 euros gross. The NGO is putting forward some measures to put an end to these wage gaps, in particular by “guaranteeing a maximum gap of 1 to 20 between the median salary in the company and that of the manager”.

The report also calls for “guarantee a decent wage across the entire value chain”but also “modify extra-financial remuneration criteria”. It is also necessary to make “efforts to reduce the pay gap between men and women”, underlines this study. This is all the more important given that in 2022, there were only two female CEOs of the CAC 40 and that male CEOs earned 2.4 times more than women, knowing “that 8 CAC 40 companies out of 10 have no more than three women among their ten highest-paid employees.”