‘We have always argued that shareholders are not effective in tackling excess pay levels for company bosses. We need more of a challenge to the cosy pay culture with a broader membership of remuneration committees and a say for the workforce in executive pay policy.’

Even some fund managers have been moved to speak out against their multi-millionaire peers for raking in huge rewards for lacklustre performance.

Neil Woodford, whose funds have a cult following among small savers, accused some rivals of hypocrisy. ‘It is the pot calling the kettle black,’ he said in an interview with the Mail earlier this spring.

‘Lots of fund managers get paid far more than the people they are criticising. It is slightly hypocritical for my industry, which is populated with all sorts of egregious rewards, to start wagging a moral finger at the corporate sector.’

Woodford’s own package is not known as his company is too new to have filed its first annual report, but his peer group are by any standards well-rewarded.

Recently-published accounts show that executives at leading stock market-listed investment houses are being paid multi-million pound packages, despite several of them seeing a fall in pay last year.

Fund managers pay: Neil Woodford, whose funds have a cult following among small savers, accused some rivals of hypocrisy

Of those we surveyed, the lowest paid, Maarten Slendebroek of Jupiter, received just over £2million. The highest, Richard Woolnough at Pru’s fund management arm MG, took home a mind-boggling £15million-plus.

This is likely to be the tip of a much bigger iceberg. Fund managers are only obliged to reveal their pay if they happen to sit on the board of a public company, like the ones listed in our table (apart from Woolnough, who is the highest paid employee at the Pru but not on the board).

In the majority of cases, their multi-million pound hauls remain a secret.

Why is that a problem? The industry view is that it is not, and that revealing fees and charges should be enough to satisfy public curiosity.

Critics, however, point out that in the absence of hard information on fund manager pay, it is impossible to tell whether the pot is being shared fairly between staff, shareholders and clients.

At a time when the ultimate investors – small pension savers – are being urged to take more responsibility for their own retirement finances – this is a matter of public interest.

The sheer size of the rewards we know about suggests there may well be scope for savings to be made through cuts to pay and staff numbers that could be passed on to customers in the form of lower fees.

Concerns over fund manager pay are reaching such a pitch that normally staid bodies such as the Institute of Directors are sounding the alarm.

The IoD fears pay in the industry is getting so out of hand it risks mutating into the next corporate scandal, with fund managers replacing investment bankers as the number one bogeymen. 

The IoD’s warning echoes a report by think-tank New Financial, which found that while investment banking pay has shrunk by around 40 per cent since the crisis, average pay per employee at asset management firms has increased by a fifth to around £175,000.

Investment bankers, it said, are getting a shrinking proportion of a dwindling pool of profits, while fund managers are taking a constant portion of a growing pile of assets.

In other words, money managers are receiving huge rises simply because savers are ploughing more money into pension pots and investment funds.

‘We don’t think there is openness about how pay is calculated,’ says Oliver Parry of the IOD. Without that openness, fund managers risk losing public trust, and becoming the new investment bankers.’

As one leading investor privately opined this week, dissatisfaction over pay is almost always a sign that things are going awry more broadly at a company.

Britain’s richly-rewarded fund managers might do well to hold that thought.

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