Tui Travel’s Peter Long is among the five highest earners among FTSE 100 firms who made over £100 million between them.
Long’s pay package earned him £13.3 million last year making him the fourth highest paid boss.
The level of chief executive pay has come in for criticism after it emerged they earn 183 times the salary of the average full-time worker.
The High Pay Centre think-tank carried out research that found top bosses earned on average £4.964 million in 2014, compared with £4.129m in 2010.
The think tank’s director, Deborah Hargreaves, told Sky News: “Pay packages of this size go far beyond what is sensible or necessary to reward and inspire top executives.
“It’s more likely that corporate governance structures in the UK are riddled with glaring weaknesses and conflicts of interest.
“The coalition government introduced some welcome reforms in 2013 that have at least enabled us to get a better understanding of the executive pay racket.
“However it’s clear that these reforms didn’t do nearly enough to start building a pay culture where everybody is rewarded fairly and proportionally for the work that they do.”
Meanwhile, speculation has merged again that Tui might be preparing to sell off its non-core businesses including Hotelbeds and specialist operators like Crystal and Hayes and Jarvis.
Tui shares jumped after a report in the Times suggested that a partial sell-off could be on the cards, following Tui’s third quarter trading update last week.
Long told the newspaper that options were being examined but that no conclusions had been made and that a full sale was unlikely.
The Times speculated that Will Waggott, currently chief executive of Tui’s non-mainstream division, could lead a management buyout.