A SALARY of £1m was for a long time the achievement of a tiny, envied minority. But last year more British executives than ever claimed a seven-figure salary as their basic pay.

A record 1,445 directors of private and public companies in Britain were paid a minimum of £1m last year, according to records filed at Companies House.

The number, which does not include those whose bonuses and benefits total over £1m, represents a staggering rise of nearly 40% over the past two years.

The figures, produced by Financial Analysis Made Easy, relate only to annual earnings last year, not the total wealth of an individual.

Directors at the top of the list of highest earners were paid considerably more than £1m.

Media tycoon Richard Des-mond, chairman of Northern & Shell and publisher of the Daily Express and Sunday Express, paid himself £40.7m, Sir James Dyson, the vacuum-cleaner designer and maker, took home £28.9m, while Badr Al-Aiban of Delta Oil received £27.1m.

The surge in pay has been fuelled by booming markets and corporate activity, particularly in the City of London.

But experts expect 2007 to be a peak in pay ahead of a more difficult economic environment.

Philip Beresford, compiler of the Sunday Times Rich List, said: “With cuts to City bonuses looking inevitable this year, these levels may be a high point for some time. In the foreseeable future, I expect the number of directors paid at this level to decline.”

The sector with the most workers with £1m salaries was financial services, accounting for 362 of the total number. Included on the list is Bob Diamond who was paid £22.9m for his various roles at Barclays. He is president of the banking group and chief executive of two of its offshoots – its investment-banking operation, Barclays Capital, and the invest-ment-management arm, Barclays Global Investors.

Peter Cruddas of securities dealer CMC Markets was paid £16.3m, while Simon Nixon, the co-founder of Moneysupermar-ket.com, the price-comparison website that floated on the London Stock Exchange last year, took home £15.4m.

The £1m-a-year list does not include the many financial-services directors who receive performance-related pay that lifts them into the seven-figure bracket. For hedge-fund managers, for example, most of their income comes in bonuses.

After financial services, the next-best-paying sector was retail, hotels and restaurants with 258 directors paid more than £1m, followed by property and construction with 208, manufacturing (133), technology (89), mining and energy (69), transport (50) and utilities (29).

Although most of the highest-paid directors come from London and the southeast, 162 are based in the north of England, 155 in the Midlands and 76 in Scotland. Only six of the directors with a basic income of £1m or more are based in Wales.

Business accounts for only a small part of Britain’s £1m-a-year club.

Beresford said: “Taking into account all City employees, other directors in quoted companies, footballers, pop stars, authors, film stars and so on, I’d estimate that the actual total of people in the UK earning over £1m last year is over 10,000 now.” With some companies the identity of the highest-paid director is not stated, only the salary. Directors in the FTSE 250 still have a smaller proportion of their pay tied to performance than their counterparts in the larger companies of the FTSE 100, according to a report from New Bridge Street Consultants.

The survey of FTSE 250 pay found that directors had only 45% of their pay linked to company performance, compared with 55% in the FTSE 100.

“As they are smaller you would expect them to be more flexible, more entrepreneurial and more fleet of foot than their large rivals,” said Rob Burdett, a partner at New Bridge Street.

“Their board directors need incentives to pursue ambitious goals, and the more leveraged their individual packages, the more motivated they will be.”

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