The pay gap between listed company bosses and the average wage in the Netherlands is one of the widest in the world, the Volkskrant said on Friday, quoting research by news agency Bloomberg.

The average pay of the boss of a Dutch stock exchange listed company was €6.9m a year, putting them above British and German chief executives but behind those in the US and Switzerland, Bloomberg said.

This, the news agency said, is 171 times the average income in the Netherlands. According to the government’s macro-economic forecasting agency CPB, the average wage in the Netherlands is currently €36,500 a year.

The Bloomberg research, which focused on 22 countries, is based on the income of CEOs whose companies are included in the most important indices, including bonuses and share options.

However, Gerard Citroen, who heads up the Dutch directors’ association, points out that there are 229,000 companies in the Netherlands and just 25 in the AEX index. ‘So I would not call it a representative sample,’ he said.