Power and Pay: Bosses of private firms head earners' table

Neil Gaydon, Harriet Green and Dorothy Thompson are three of Yorkshire's most well-known business leaders and run companies with international influence and recognition.

Chief executive of pay TV technology company Pace since April 2006, Neil Gaydon earned a salary of 418,000, a 400,000 bonus and a 114,000 pension contribution in the last financial year.

The company is based at Salts Mill in Saltaire and offers a range of set-top box technology and home solutions.

Mr Gaydon has seen his firm go from the brink of bankruptcy to become the fastest-growing company in its market and breach the 1bn sales mark for the first time in 2009.

Harriet Green started her job as chief executive of Leeds electronics distributor Premier Farnell in the same month Mr Gaydon was appointed at Pace in 2006.

Her latest pay packet was 858,000 – including a bonus of 342,000 – and she has seen her company's share price rocket by almost 100 per cent in the past year.

Pre-tax profits rose 70 per cent to 23.6m in the three months to October 2010 and the gross margin of the firm – which supplies Microsoft, Nokia and Philips – has improved for eight quarters in a row.

Dorothy Thompson received a basic salary of 450,000 as chief executive of Drax Group, based near Selby, and a bonus of 293,000 in the last financial year – as well as 18,000 in benefits.

She became the first female head of a quoted power company when she took over as boss of the largest coal power station in Europe station in 2005.

Drax's latest half-year trading update for six months up to June 2010 revealed a 74m increase in revenue and a 42m rise in gross profit.

Other high-earners include James Lambert, of R&R Ice Cream, on around 435,000, and Iain Cornish, of the Yorkshire Building Society, on a salary of 327,000.