PSI-Listed Executive Compensation Stretches to 53× the Worker Average in 2025 — Pedro Soares dos Santos Pulls €5 Million at Jerónimo Martins as 15 Top Managers Pool More Than €23 Million

The compensation gap between Portugal's listed-company chief executives and the workers below them has widened again. A pay analysis circulated through Saturday's Portuguese press — drawing on the official remuneration reports filed by 15 of the 16 main-index companies on the Lisbon stock exchange — shows the average PSI top manager earned roughly 53 times the average worker salary in 2025, the steepest multiple recorded in the index's recent history.

The headline ratio comes out of a combined CEO compensation pool of more than €23 million across the 15 reporting companies. Set against the INE-measured Q1 2026 gross monthly average of €1,611 released yesterday — equivalent to about €22,500 a year before social contributions — the multiple steepens from prior published cycles: 23× in 2018 ECO data, 32× in a 2020 PSI study, 46× in the most recent multi-year update before this one.

Pedro Soares dos Santos Anchors the Top of the Table

The single highest-paid manager is Pedro Soares dos Santos at Jerónimo Martins. He drew approximately €5 million gross in 2025 — about €416,000 per month — and, by Jornal de Negócios' arithmetic, the equivalent of 223 annual median Portuguese salaries stacked on one another. The publication notes that "nenhuma outra cotada apresenta uma discrepância tão elevada": no other listed company shows a comparable spread.

The Jerónimo Martins outlier is partly a structural artefact. The group is among the largest private employers in Portugal — its Pingo Doce supermarket chain alone payrolls tens of thousands at retail-floor wage bands close to the legal minimum. The denominator in any internal pay-ratio calculation is, by construction, very wide. But the absolute number — €5 million in a single year — is also the highest disclosed annual compensation in the index.

The Wider PSI Picture

The 15-company pool covers the heavyweights of the Portuguese listed economy: financial-services franchises, utilities, infrastructure operators, telecoms, hotel groups, and industrial holdings. With combined CEO pay above €23 million and a national wage average of €1,611 per month, the implied dispersion underscores how the listed-company executive bracket has decoupled from the wage cycle the rest of the country lives in — even as the same INE destaque showed Portuguese workers booking a 2.7% real-terms gain on Q1 2025.

The data point lands while the Cabinet's Trabalho XXI labour-reform package is on the Assembleia floor and the Conselho de Ministros has been pressed on in-work poverty and collective-bargaining coverage. It also arrives in the same week that the Tribunal Constitucional struck down the RNH Portaria 230/2019 table that defined which professional categories qualified for the 20% IRS preference — a decision that has now reopened a parallel argument about which incomes Portugal taxes lightly.

What This Means for Expats

• Negotiation context for senior hires. If you are recruiting into a Portuguese listed-company executive role, the published comparators now read above €1.5 million annually for the bracket. Most foreign multinationals operating in Portugal pay materially below that, so the local listed market has set its own benchmark — particularly in retail, energy, and banking.
• Cost of living vs. visible inequality. The 53× multiple is set against a working-age average Portuguese wage of just over €22,500 a year. Visiting expat households often underestimate how close to that average most domestic life is priced — and how much political weight published ratios carry in the labour-reform debate.
• Tax interaction. Top-bracket IRS hits at 53% above €82,500 of taxable income, with the surtax adicional de solidariedade applying a further 2.5%–5% above €80,000–€250,000. CEO-level disclosed pay is taxed accordingly — the ratio in net-take-home terms compresses meaningfully from the gross-pay print.
• Sector signal. The Jerónimo Martins outlier is partly a retail-payroll denominator effect. Tech, banking, and energy CEOs in Portugal earn very well, but the 200×-plus ratios concentrate where retail floor staff make up most of headcount.

The 2026 remuneration reports will land in spring 2027 and will, on current trend, push the ratio higher still. Whether the Trabalho XXI floor-wage and collective-bargaining provisions narrow the wedge is now an open political question — one the Assembleia commission will work through over the coming weeks.