When is a fat cat not a fat cat?

So, it's that time of year. I don't mean the time of year when a chap goes blasting hundreds of wildfowl out the sky with his 12 bore, although some chaps are indeed firing off their last few shots of the current season around about now.

No, I mean annual report and accounts season, a period which sees me spending many an hour leafing through the glossy - and some not-so-glossy - tomes produced by companies in the pub sector. God, I know how to live.

Perhaps it's just me - though somehow I doubt it - but after admiring the pretty photos of pub exteriors I get drawn as if by magic to the director's pay section in the 'notes to the accounts'.

For many people executive salaries are a contentious subject, the phrase 'fat cat' having long been a part of the lexicon of the English language.

Me? I subscribe to the view that a chief executive is worth what he brings to the party. True, there are those who've overseen a slump in fortunes and leave a business with a golden 'bugger off', and that rankles.

But just as one doesn't baulk at a business investing hundreds of thousands of pounds in a piece of plant machinery if it generates sales and profits, so it's illogical to take umbridge at a chief executive who does the same.

That said, there will always be questions about whether the grand fromages​ of the pub trade have given value for money during the year.

Elsewhere on these online pages I've looked at the total pay of chief executives at the top six listed companies in the industry, set against the earnings-per-share of their business to see whose salary has proved the most fruitful.

Feel free to disagree with the choice of indicators, but they give an idea of who's achieving what, and how much it costs.