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The retirement savings of the UK's top company bosses have gone up at an average of £400,000 to £4.3m in the previous year, indicating the widening gap between employees and bosses.

New figures published in the Guardian, based on the TUC's tenth annual Pension Watch survey, indicate that the average director's pension has risen faster than the pensions of most ordinary people, and now stands at 24.4 percent of the occupational pension.

Analysing pensions of 351 directors from FTSE 100 companies, Pension Watch identifies BG Group Chief Executive Sir Frank Chapman as the executive with the largest savings, worth £19.4m. Chapman's savings could give him up to £1m a year on retirement.

"Companies continue to chip away at the pensions of ordinary workers while awarding their directors solid platinum pensions worth hundreds of thousands of pounds a year," said TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber.

"Top executives already enjoy huge pay packages that go up every year, irrespective of the success of their company or the state of the economy. These salaries alone guarantee lucrative pensions so the generous packages uncovered are an insult to the vast majority of workers who are denied such favourable terms," he said.

The report also mentions the significant number of executives accepting cash handouts instead of pension contributions, and reveals that the average cash handout was £165,000 in the previous year.

Cash payments are usually taken when the savings have reached more than could be accumulated over a lifetime. This amount currently stands at £1.5m.

Also, the most common retirement age of UK bosses remains 60 - in sharp contrast to employees who are often forced to go past their 60s or seventies before retiring.

In response to the figures, the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) expressed its concern over the rising gap between executives' and workers' pensions.

"It follows that people who earn more will accrue bigger pensions. But investors may have important questions about fairness if the pensions of directors are disproportionately more generous than those of other staff," Darren Philip, director of policy, told the Guardian.

"More transparency is needed around boardroom pensions. Boards need to be open about their pension arrangements so that shareholders such as pension funds can hold top management to account."

Brendan added that the gap is not just reflective of the amounts accumulated by the rich, but also a clear indication as to how much ordinary people suffer in the private sector - with many of them denied employer pensions.