Guys Named Dave Equal Number of Women in FTSE 100 CEO Roles

(Bloomberg) -- The chief executive officers of the largest London-listed companies are as likely to be named Dave as they are to be female.

Just seven of the FTSE 100 companies’ CEOs are women, equal to the number of men named Dave or David who lead firms on the index, according to a report released Wednesday by the CIPD and the High Pay Centre. CEOs named Steve and Stephen also match up, with seven represented.

Women are relatively underpaid compared to their male counterparts, who earn 110 percent more on average. Emma Walmsley, the head of GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, is the only woman to crack the top 25 with a pay package of 4.9 million pounds ($6.2 million), according to the report. She ranked 25th, behind several men running much smaller companies, including the top earner, Persimmon Plc’s Jeff Fairburn.

Persimmon, a residential real estate developer, has a value of 7.6 billion pounds, about a tenth of Glaxo’s market cap. Fairburn earned 47 million pounds last year, though the company has said it will reduce or cap some of its incentive plans.

U.K. firms with at least 250 employees were required to publish the pay disparities between men and women this year under new reporting rules. More than three quarters reported that men made more while an analysis by the House of Commons Business Committee found that pay gaps of 40 percent aren’t uncommon.

The CIPD report also found a widening gap between CEOs and their workers. The average pay for a FTSE 100 CEO last year was 5.66 million pounds, it said. That’s about 160 times what a full-time worker in the U.K. makes.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amy Thomson in London at athomson6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dinesh Nair at dnair5@bloomberg.net, Michael Hytha

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