The scolds over at the High Pay centre keep telling us that CEOs get much too much money. Quite why said scolds have an interest in how shareholders spend their own money is unexplained but they do keep making the point.

One of their explanations is that the diffuse interest of shareholders in a publicly listed company means that the CEOs as a class - to include all those directors, exec and non-exec - get to bamboozle the owners into those high payoffs. If this were true it would not be, could not be, a problem which affects private equity. For there the shareholder interest is, by definition, concentrated and presumably more than a match for those employees, however senior they may be:

The chief executive of Dr Martens is set for a £58m windfall in a stock market listing tomorrow which could see the bootmaker valued for as much as £3.5bn.

Kenny Wilson, who has led the business since 2018, is one of a number of bosses in line for a combined fortune of £350m, The Sunday Times reported.

Dr Martens has flourished under its private equity owner Permira, which has invested in the company’s stores and online business, helping sales to soar almost six-fold to £672m since it took control in 2013.

Ah. So that’s that theory killed off then. The presence of a concentrated shareholder interest, rather than the diffuse which is to be bamboozled, leads to higher, not lower, pay.

As with that CEO of Entain who is off into private equity for five times his public company pay.

The reason CEOs get paid a lot is because shareholders value the services of CEOs. Whether they should or not is of course another matter but since it’s their money to spend as they wish what business is it of the rest of us?