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Britain's top bosses earn $1.34 m a year

LONDON: Bosses of Britain's top 30 FTSE 100 companies receive average annual pay cheques worth 850,000 pounds ($1.34 million), a Sunday newspaper said.

Citing a report by a group of London-based consultants and accountants, the Sunday Business newspaper also said the number of women in British boardrooms had doubled to one in five, up from one in 10 a year ago.

The report said the salaries, which added bonuses to basic take home pay, had risen six percent in the last year, almost three times the rate of inflation.

Salaries of senior company officials are politically controversial in Britain. Last week, the chief executive of Barclays Plc BARC.L, Matthew Barrett, came under fire for reportedly being in line for a performance related package worth 30 million pounds at the same time the bank announced plans to close 171 regional branches.

Meanwhile, the Independent on Sunday newspaper said investment bank Salomon Smith Barney had moved to stop the exodus of staff to dot-com companies by offering to provide employees with free underwear, toothbrushes, free gourmet meals when working late and a complimentary laptop computer.-Reuters