Executive Director Sam Bowman’s comments on the High Pay Centre’s promotion of ‘Fat Cat Tuesday’ have featured in the Financial Times and Forbes. From the Financial Times:
Sam Bowman, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, dismissed Fat Cat day as “the hand-waving of pub economics, not serious analysis”. He said: “Chief executives can be worth quite a lot to firms, as is shown by huge moves in company share prices when good CEOs are hired or bad CEOs are fired. Steve Jobs can make a firm; Steve Ballmer can break a firm.”
From Forbes (written by ASI Senior Fellow Tim Worstall):
There’s a number of problems with this manufactured outrage, as my colleague at the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, points out:
Top bosses will have earned more money by the end of Tuesday than the average worker will do in a year, campaign group the High Pay Centre has claimed. The group has declared the day Fat Cat Tuesday, based on chief executives earning £5m a year, compared with the median UK salary of £27,645. The think tank says its aim is to highlight the “unfair pay gap”.