Even critics of lavish compensation for chief executives often don't subscribe to a pay for performance approach with the top job, but irate shareholders and regulators' disdain for overly generous paychecks for CEOs under whose watch a company suffers catastrophic financial failure is growing. And they're not going to take it anymore.

One furious shareholder gave Comcast Corp.'s board an earful for plans to pay founder Ralph Roberts's estate a multimillion dollar benefit on his death, which resulted in the company eighty-sixing the benefit--and his annual salary is now set at $1 for the rest of his service to the company. Comcast's performance has been poor--shares lost more than a third of their value last year.

Three financial services company executives, former Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O'Neal, Charles Prince, former CEO of Citigroup Inc., and Countrywide's current CEO, Angelo Mozilo, were called before a congressional committee to defend their mega-compensation during the subprime mortgage meltdown. The three most likely will walk away from the hearings with far less sweet deals than other chief executives who preceded them under Congressional scrutiny, such as former Home Depot Inc. CEO Robert Nardelli.

The Wall Street Journal reported that other finance industry CEOs, including the heads of Morgan Stanley and Washington Mutual Inc., declined bonuses for last year, which may indicate a spreading sensitivity to shareholder resolutions seeking advisory votes on executive compensation plans. Such resolutions garnered far greater support last year than in the past. But that doesn't necessarily mean that say on pay will be the big governance breakthrough in the U.S. that it has been in other countries; there is still strong resistance at boards that contend shareholders should have no say in such internal matters. Still, in view of current market conditions, the issue is unlikely to go away any time soon and more CEOs could find themselves downsizing their income "voluntarily."