Bosses earn 143 times the salary of their employees

A new study has revealed that bosses in Britain's leading companies get paid 143 times more than their employees.

It was found that the wage divide has nearly tripled since 1998, when the average chief executive of firms in the FTSE 100 earning 47 times as much as staff, News24.com reported.

The largest pay gap was at mining group Randgold Resources, where boss Mark Bristow was paid 4.4million pounds in 2013, 1500 as much as his average employee. At retailer Next, boss Simon Wolfson earned almost 460 times as much as his average worker in 2013 but then chose to distribute his bonus to staff.

The study comes after the Bank of England halved its pay growth forecast for 2014 to below the rate of inflation at 1.25%.

The forecast came after official data showed that annual pay fell by 0.2% in the second quarter of 2014, the first decline since the height of the financial crisis in 2009.