Shareholders in Trinity Mirror want the company's chief executive, Sly Bailey, to cut her pay in half, reports today's Sunday Times.
They believe the cut would reflect the fall in the publisher's share price, which has resulted in the company's market value halving over the past 12 months.
It would mean Bailey's pay dropping from £750,000 to £375,000. That's only a fraction of the £1.7m total package she received last year, due to extra bonus and pensions payments.
Trinity, which publishes the Daily Mirror and the Daily Record in Scotland, also owns 160 local and regional titles.
On Friday, the company's market value, based on a share price of 41.25p, stood at £104.03m.
The Sunday Times's reporter, James Ashton, quotes one investor as saying: "It is untenable if the market capitalisation remains at this level."
The story does not identify any specific investors, but it does say that they believe Bailey should "rebase her remuneration to recognise that she is running a far smaller business than when she joined eight years ago."
A Trinity Mirror spokesman said: "There has been no contact of any kind with the board regarding Ms Bailey's pay, as Mr Ashton was told on Friday."
The row over Bailey's pay comes after similar concerns were aired at last month's annual general meeting.
Some 11% of Trinity's investors voted against the company's remuneration report, and the National Union of Journalists also questioned Bailey's salary.
The union distributed an open letter to shareholders, which claimed that the workforce had halved since 2004 while its operating profit had been reduced by 66%.
As with all publishers, of both national and regional newspapers, Trinity has suffered from a dramatic slump in advertising revenue.
Sources: Sunday Times/Daily Telegraph/Yahoo Finance
