Pay and bonuses in the boardroom and the City are among the most divisive issues in corporate life. 

Concern about adverse reaction to rewards for executives at failing Thames Water was among the factors behind KKR, not known for modesty in enriching its chieftains, pulling out of a bid despite completing its due diligence.

This week eyebrows were raised when it emerged M&S boss Stuart Machin was to receive a pay and bonus package of £7.1million in the year to March 29.

The handsome figure was agreed by the remuneration committee ahead of the debilitating cyber-attack.

One wonders what the late chief executive Sir Richard Greenbury, who wrote a landmark report on restraining corporate remuneration, would make of that.

Greenbury was the first M&S boss to report £1billion of profit, way back in 1997. That would be almost £2billion today, a mountain not yet scaled by Machin.

He has been vital to M&S’s return to health and his style of leadership, including round the clock duties in the systems incursion, is much admired by colleagues and associates. 

Credit for the turnaround and some brave decisions on store closures and renewals must also go to chairman Archie Norman and Machin’s predecessor Steve Rowe.

When it comes to boardroom rewards anything which has the number 100 in it attracts attention.

Machin is unlikely to manage that. Jeff Fairburn was driven from office at housebuilder Persimmon in 2018 after it was revealed that he was up for a £100million award for building homes later found to have safety defects.

At Reckitt Benckiser, former chief executive Bart Becht was rewarded with £100million after devising a super-brand strategy and powering the Cillit Bang maker into the FTSE 100.

Recently it was the turn of Ryanair entrepreneur Michael O’Leary. His carrier may be short in charm and comfort, but has a remarkable record, air traffic control permitting, of getting passengers to destinations on time.

It is not for nothing that the Irish-based carrier has a market value of £21billion, making it the most valuable in Europe.

O’Leary has contrived to earn himself an options and bonus package worth €100million (£84.2million). He is not short of wealth.

The shouty chief executive is a near-billionaire, owning a 4.15 per cent personal stake in the enterprise he helped create. 

Given his remarkable success, in contrast to the meltdown among cheapo carriers in the US, it is hard to argue against his rewards.

Ryanair may be no-frills but it attracts a rich variety of investors, including funds run by Baillie Gifford, Rothschild Wealth and Jupiter. If there were to be objections to O’Leary’s pay award it would be about the way it was achieved.

He has become the recipient of the financial gusher after an earlier scheme expired and by means of big share buybacks which lifted the value of the stock to where it needed to be to hit the jackpot.

A common complaint among UK executives, used as an excuse for shifting listings to New York, is that UK governance rules preclude big awards.

As matters stand, O’Leary’s payout is higher than that of GE Aerospace boss Larry Culp (he has just secured an enormous Qatar engine contract) who took home £66.4million.

This kind of pay is as of nothing compared to the less transparent and lightly taxed awards which go to high-voltage principals in private equity. 

The O’Leary payout means he is committed to staying on until 2028, which is a big plus for investors.

It is to the credit of Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Labour that, as part of her growth agenda, she chose to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses, critical to keeping financiers in London.

Yet her assault on inheritance, pension pots and capital gains, with the threat of more to come, has driven some of the City’s biggest rainmakers offshore.

Recent over-generous handouts suggest that it is not pay which causes firms and executives to head elsewhere.

Punishing taxation – as was the case in the pre-Thatcher era – is the real villain.