Business Notes Compensation

Mention the name Graef Crystal in a corporate boardroom, and you're likely to hear a collective growl. Crystal, 57, is the nation's foremost critic of high executive pay, and for half a decade he has been outraging business leaders with his high-profile columns describing just how overpaid they are. But Crystal is beginning to find it difficult to get his message across.

Last week, after an intimidating barrage of corporate complaints, Financial World magazine abruptly dropped the regular column written by the University of California, Berkeley, business professor. Eight months earlier, Crystal -- weary of sideline debates with executives on Time Warner's business side about the theoretical value of chairman Steve Ross's stock options -- had terminated a four-year relationship with FORTUNE.

Crystal says advertisers and powerful corporate officials had pressured Financial World to kill his column. But magazine officials claim Crystal was let go largely as a result of some errors he made in evaluating executive pay packages. Whatever the reason, Crystal is not giving up. He's now prepared to purchase stock in companies he believes send out overweight paychecks. That would enable him to haunt proxy meetings and demand shareholder votes on compensation.