The chief executives of the biggest Dutch listed companies earned an average of €3.6m last year, but there are very wide variations within that, according to new research by Belgium’s Vlerick Business School.

The best paid chief executive officer of an AEX-listed Dutch firm earned €8.3m, while the one with the lowest remuneration was paid €700,000, the Financieele Dagblad quoted the research as showing.

The €3.6m average package in 2017 is up 10% on 2016 and 106 times the average Dutch salary, the FD pointed out. The rise for a mid-cap CEO was 3% but for small cap firms, the average salary fell 2%.

The institute looked at the pay packages of chief executives at 862 companies in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Sweden.

The best paid executives, with an average pay deal worth €6.2m were in Germany. In the UK, the average pay deal was worth €3.8m.

The size of the company and the nationality of the chief executive both had a role in the size of the pay deal, said Vlerick professor Xavier Baeten. ‘A CEO from a different country to the country where the company is listed tends to earn more on average than those where CEO and listing were the same.’

This, he said, shows, that companies have to pay more to attract a foreign CEO.