Are UK bosses paid too much?

A recent survey of executive pay has shown that the average pay for directors in Britain's top companies rose 37% last year. The average pay for top CEOs is now £2.875m.

Supporters of high pay levels claim that it is necessary to pay chief executives well in order to prevent them from going abroad.

However, Professor John Van Reenen, the director of the Centre for Economic Performance, was critical of British managers, and doubted whether they could succeed in foreign companies. In fact, only a very few top companies in Europe and the USA are managed by British chief executives.

He said that the quality of management quality in the US was far higher than in the UK. Only one in every 50 American companies surveyed could be described as 'very badly managed', compared with one in twelve in the UK.

What do you think? Are bosses paid too highly where you are?