Executive pay came back into focus last week with Fat Cat Thursday, the day when the pay of the average FTSE 100 company chief exceeds a typical worker’s annual salary of £28,758.

Chief executives last year took home an average £4.5million, according to the High Pay Centre and the HR trade body CIPD. 

The research found that on average, FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies paid external consultants £80,000 in 2016 to advise them on the design of executive remuneration schemes and how much they should pay their top directors. 

Additionally, it found that Deloitte and New Bridge Street, which is part of insurance giant Aon, between them advise half of the FTSE 100 and 250 on pay. 

The firm with the next highest number of appointments is PWC, followed by Willis Tower Watson, Keplar and FIT. 

Critics say that remuneration consultants essentially offer “money for old rope” and that they are responsible for designing the pay schemes that have seen total executive pay packets soar since the 1990s. 

Remuneration consultants argue that they have actually helped restrain executive pay and that they helped popularise concepts, such as longer deferral periods for executive bonus share awards, claw back and greater restraint in general on pay. 

According to corporate governance research firm Manifest, the gap between what a FTSE 100 chief executive gets and what the average employee receives has fallen to its lowest level in a decade in 2016.

It said that the average individual chief executive was paid 349 times more than the average worker, compared with 448:1 back in 2008.

The gap between CEO and workers’ pay peaked when the ration hit 515:1 in 2011 and, barring a spike in 2014, it has been falling since.