Westpac Banking Corporation's annual general meeting, held in Perth, was a mixture of contrition on the part of CEO Brian Hartzer and chairman Lindsay Maxted and passive aggressive behaviour from many shareholders who voted against remuneration packages for the c-suite.Maxted started with by trying to keep the tone as low key as possible, but had to acknowledge the impact on public sentiment of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry "[Royal commission] coverage has been extensive and many shareholders will have been shocked by some of the revelations. Indeed in reading the questions submitted by shareholders prior to this meeting, it is clear that many are disappointed, angry and upset by issues raised by the royal commission," Maxted conceded."Executive remuneration is always of great interest to shareholders, and a high percentage of questions we received for this AGM were on this topic," he said.In assessing short term variable reward performance, outcomes were below target for economic performance and for customer and service related areas of the annual scorecard. In addition, the Board reduced scorecard outcomes to reflect collective accountability for risk and reputation matters.This year's short term variable rewards for the CEO and group executives in Australia were, on average, 25 per cent lower than last year.The largest individual year on year reduction was 50 per cent. Hartzer's short term variable reward outcome was cut to A$900,000, 30 per cent lower than last year."I would also highlight that no long term variable reward vested this year and so around one-third of the CEO and Group Executive's potential remuneration was forfeited; equivalent to around $18 million," Maxted said. No-one was listening - many of the shareholders' votes were already in before the meeting started, making it clear a first strike was in the offing."Feedback from shareholders has varied, but the key point from those voting against the remuneration report has been that although the Board took events over the year into account, many have questioned whether we went far enough, particularly in reducing short term variable reward paid to the CEO and other executives."Maxted tried pointing out that the royal commission is an inquiry into misconduct; it is not an investigation into all aspects of financial services or indeed into conduct generally."So although the royal commission has clearly focused on matters of extreme importance, it has captured only a fraction of the activity taking place inside financial institutions," he asserted, arguing that the focus was too narrow to form a view on overall culture," he said.Not all agreed, with some calling for zero executive bonuses, and a symbolic cut to board members' salaries.One of them was John Campbell, the representative in the meeting for the Australian Shareholders Association. He took issue with the calculation of the equity component of executives' long-term incentives. They suffered a cut of 39 per cent, and in the ASA's opinion it should have been a much greater cut, if they got paid at all. He said that he had no