Not a penny more...

'The price of shares can go down as well as up.' But of course no one really believed that - until it happened.

While the crash in share prices has hit many companies - Marconi, for instance, had a stock market value of $35bn a few years ago, yet has been valued by a US court at just $430m, while the share price, which was valued in pounds, currently stands at 0.6p - the other main sufferers are shareholders and pension funds.

In line with the growing perception that 'Fat-Cat' drug company directors are more interested in corporate, managerial and personal profits than in social responsibility, the pharmaceutical industry is seeing the emergence of a new type of protester - the quarrelsome shareholder. Not only does the industry have to contend with protesters from expected sources such as the animal rights movement, it is also coming under fire from share-holders, because dividends and pensions have been hit by the fall in the stock market over the past three years.

Take, for example, GlaxoSmithKline. Its ceo, Jean-Pierre Garnier, must be wishing for a return to the gentlemanly days when shareholders wouldn't have dreamt of asking anything so vulgar as whether he deserved his current pay, and certainly wouldn't have forced the company to withdraw the £20m package he was offered last year, or have argued about any excessive pay-off he could have received.

In fact, in the rude new world of shareholder activism, the opposite is happening and shareholder groups are asking all sorts of awkward questions, worried about the size of golden handshakes that top executives could get when they leave or retire.

Aside from the explosive issue of ATEX, the question of executive pay is now threatening to blow up in directors' faces because shareholders are unhappy that the rewards they were told were necessary to attract top-notch performers are apparently still needed even when companies' stocks are taking a pounding. After months of falling share prices, many people are asking harder questions about what happens to the money they pay each month towards their retirement.

But investors are interested in a lot more than just the pay packet. Last month, pressure from the world's largest pension group, the Californian Public Employees Retirement System, led GSK to announce it was slashing prices in Africa for its latest combination AIDS treatment, while in the UK the Association of British Insurers and the National Association of Pension Funds are actively protesting against pay policies at companies' AGMs. The likelihood of directors receiving huge pay-offs in the future seems to be receding if the pension managers have their way.