The pay of chief executives has carried on rising despite soaring unemployment and widespread pay freezes for rank-and-file workers.

The average five-year pay package of a FTSE 100 boss is £9.6m, according to research compiled by Patterson Associates, a remuneration adviser. The figure, which is rising annually at 7.9%, or seven times the rate of inflation, includes salary, bonuses and long-term incentives.

The FTSE 100 has rallied 21% in the past year, but still stands 16% lower than it did in November 2007. Since that point, by contrast, average five-year pay has risen 19%.

The survey, covering the 58 FTSE 100 stocks that have remained in the index since 2004, measures pay against total shareholder return over the last five years.

It shows that shareholders in the mining group BHP Billiton, the best-performing stock, have paid £16m to chief executive Chip Goodyear and his successor, Marius Kloppers, to secure an £800 return on an initial investment of £100 five years ago. Another strong performer, BG Group, paid its boss, Frank Chapman, £23m. He would have turned an initial investment of £100 into £350. Patterson highlights that pay at banks — notably Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland — was out of kilter because they delivered the lowest shareholder returns.

The research shows that though the relationship between pay and performance is improving and long-term incentives are pegged closely to performance, short-term bonuses are still too high at poorly performing companies.

“Despite the increasing alignment of pay with performance, it is still surprising that remuneration committees appear so reluctant to really discriminate between good, bad and ugly performance in their salary and bonus awards,” said Simon Patterson, the report’s author.

He pointed out that the average five-year salary among “winners” — those companies that have appreciated in value by 5% or more a year — was £4.4m, but still stood at £4m for underperformers. Meanwhile, the average five-year bonus was £4m for winners and only £500,000 less for underperformers at £3.5m.

The new figures are revealed as shareholders campaign for better corporate governance that will clamp down on excessive pay and unwarranted bonuses.

The National Association of Pension Funds last week wrote to the chairmen of the FTSE 350 companies urging them to exercise restraint on remuneration.

Salaries have also become a hot topic in America under the Obama administration. Seeking to hire a new boss to replace Ken Lewis, Bank of America will require approval of the compensation package from Kenneth Feinberg, the government’s pay czar.

One surprise in Patterson’s survey was that bosses running the best-performing companies — those in the upper quartile — have actually seen their average five-year pay decline by 7.9% to £14m.

Inflation stands at 1.1%, as measured by the consumer price index. Average earnings, including bonuses, rose at 1.2% last year, but by only 0.8% in the private sector, according to the Office for National Statistics.

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