Contact Energy has backtracked from plans to raise fees for its directors.
The decision follows angry protests by some of the 1000 shareholders at the company's annual general meeting in Auckland on Thursday.
Contact Energy planned to double the amount of money it has available to pay its directors - a move that riled many speakers at the meeting.
They voted to increase the total sum of money available to be paid to directors from $770,000 to $1.5 million a year.
But the directors decided not to go ahead with actually paying any of that money in baseline fees for themselves.
Those fees will stay at $100,000 for the six members of the board, with extra money payable only for extra duties.
Contact Energy had previously said it needed to raise the directors' fees to compete with other large companies in attracting top-quality board members.
However, chairman Grant King says the decision now gives Contact Energy the flexibility to contemplate several outcomes.
"For example, additional directors, a change in the committee structure, payment for additional workload that increasingly arises for directors and clearly, at some point in the future, potential increases in directors fees."
Mr King says Contact Energy directors are still paid less than their counterparts in other companies.
He says the opposition of shareholders was only one reason not to amend the directors' pay - another was current global financial crisis.
Contact says opposition to the rise in fees amounted to just over 21% of those who voted.
