Switzerland's voters will go to the polls on Sunday to decide on controversial proposals which would impose strict limits on the salaries awarded to top executives.
The proposals are the brain child of Swiss businessman turned politician Thomas Minder, who runs a small family company producing natural cosmetics.
Mr Minder wants shareholders to have a veto over managers' salaries, and to ban golden handshakes altogether.
The "fat cat initiative", as it has come to be called, would, if approved, be written into the Swiss constitution, and would apply to all Swiss companies listed on Switzerland's stock exchange.
Mr Minder, an outspoken man, says the culture of high salaries and high bonuses in Switzerland has got out of hand, pointing to the fact that huge sums have been paid out even when the companies concerned were doing badly.
The bankruptcy of national icon Swissair back in 2001, and the subsequent huge payoffs to its failed boss Mario Corti, were the catalyst to Mr Minder's decision to act.
"That really stuck in my throat," he told Swiss television. "It made me absolutely furious.
"I'm still furious today, to think that a chief executive like Mr Corti could get five years' salary to go. I mean, the company was in a disastrous situation. At the end he wasn't even paying its bills. Swissair went bankrupt. The company doesn't exist anymore."...
...If passed, the measures would give Switzerland some of the strictest laws on executive pay in the world, far tougher than the limit on bonuses just approved by the European Union.
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