This meant that part-time women workers earned an average of 92 per cent of their male counterparts compared with 87 per cent in the 2001-02 tax year.The impact on the overall average was magnified by the fact that more than 100,000 part-time workers have been recruited over the last year compared with a fall of 29,000 in the number of full-timers.On an annual basis, which includes overtime and bonuses, average earnings for women rose by 3.5 per cent to £20,314, breaking through the £20,000 barrier for the first time. However, this was 72 per cent less than the average £28,065 earned by men.Patricia Hewitt, the trade and industry secretary, welcomed the news but low pay campaigners described the progress as “disappointing”.Katherine Rake, the director of the Fawcett Society that campaigns for equal pay, said divide in annual earnings showed that equality would take decades. “This is the equivalent of men receiving a pay cheque for every month in the year while women only get paid from January to July,” she said “The rate of change is disappointing. Even if the pay continues to close at the same rate it has over the last five years, it will take a further 85 years for the gap for full-timers to close completely.”The Fawcett Society is calling on the Government to bring in legislation forcing companies to audit their pay rolls for gender gaps. The pay gap between men and women has shrunk to its smallest since modern records began as the average female salary topped £20,000 for the first time, official figures showed yesterday.
Hourly pay rates for women jumped by 3.5 per cent to £10.88 in the tax year that ended in April, compared with a 1.1 per cent rise for men to £12.56, the Office for National Statistics said.The narrowing means women earned 82 per cent of men’s wages on an hourly basis, up from 81 per cent last year and the closest figure since at least 1991 when modern records began.The main factor was a narrowing in the gap for part-time work. A total of £10.3m has been set aside as part of a reward package to retain 102 staff in the new company.

AMP executives in Australia, however, will take a pay cut to reflect the smaller business they will be left with once the demerger occurs.Andrew Mohl, chief executive of AMP, will see his remuneration drop 28 per cent. Henderson, the fund manager, will be the lead company in the new UK business, which will market itself as an asset manager and will be named HHG.Henderson was rocked earlier this year, however, by revelations of major compliance failings at the company in an internal audit.Mr Yates said all the issues in the report had been dealt with, adding: “I would be shocked, surprised and disappointed if any further compliance issues came to light,”He also sought to reassure potential investors that HHG has sufficient reserves to cover mis-selling compensation payments and other liabilities in the group A total of £1.4bn has been set aside in provisions for HHG. But the UK life funds were revealed as being very thin on capital, with Pearl, the strongest of funds, shown to have a free asset ratio of just 1.8 per cent.AMP shareholders will be given one HHG share for every AMP share they own, and AMP will keep a 15 per cent stake in HHG. Mr Yates is now seeking support from the investment community in London for the new listing. “We want to persuade as many Australian shareholders to stay with us, but we have to assume that we will have to build a new shareholder constituency in the UK,” Mr Yates said.Despite AMP’s willingness to engage in talks with bidders, Mr Yates said he was not “hawking his company around” and was determined to push ahead with the float. It is thought likely that bidders will re-emerge for all or parts of HHG, now that its capital issues have been addressed..

AMP has revealed the state of the UK businesses it is planning to list on the London Stock Exchange in December, and said it would still be open to offers if any bidders came forward. The City expects Prudential, which owns nearly 80 per cent of the business, to sell it. But it is thought that it cannot find a buyer at the moment because the insurer wants to extract a much higher price than is currently reflected in Egg’s share price.Prudential’s shares moved down 7p to 461.25p. Legal and General and Aviva, rival UK life assurers, will report new business figures next week.Hilary Cook, analyst at Barclays Stockbrokers, said: “Everybody knows how tough it is out there for life assurers, but Prudential are in a better position than most because of its Far East division.”People are still wary about financial products in the UK.

Confidence may have returned to the stock market but that’s not going to be reflected in these results yet.”The Prudential’s shares have risen steadily from 281p in March earlier this year.. But the City does believe the insurer has been hampered from expanding in the US because its capital reserves have not been as deep as they used to be.Prudential refused to comment on its plans for Egg, the internet and telephone bank it owns.There are mounting rumours that Egg will say when it unveils figures next week that it will pull out of France, where it has had a disastrous foray and in which it has invested about £100m. But there appeared to be the shoots of recovery quarter three-on-quarter two.”Prudential has marked itself out from UK competitors by heavily investing in establishing a presence in Asia. In Asia, new business sales rose 17 per cent to £391m, despite the impact of the Sars virus. Prudential yesterday signalled a recovery in stock markets and consumer confidence in the past couple of months, but reported a fall in its new business sales for the first nine months of the year. This includes shedding more than 2,100 and a rationalisation of its manufacturing and supply chains in an attempt to improve performance.A spokesman for the company said most analysts would be “pleasantly surprised” by the amount of the payments as the top end of the range of expectations had been up to £80m.Last month Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein estimated that the total deficit for FTSE 100 companies had dropped by about 22 per cent to £49bn since March although the FTSE 100 index would need to rise to 5,678 from the current 4339.7 to completely eliminate the combined shortfall.Yesterday ICI shares fell 4.25p at 189p, valuing the company at £2.3bn..