Shareholders expressed their discontent with the row that has broken out within one of France’s oldest industrial dynasties over pay awards at Wendel Investments, the investment group 34 per cent controlled by the Wendel family’s 1,000 members.

Jacques Wallois, a long-time Wendel shareholder, said as he took a break from the packed annual meeting in Paris on Monday: “It is lamentable that people of such power have descended to this level and are fighting with each other in public. It makes me sad.”