The Amgen ceo confronted an often testy group of shareholders Wednesday, his first annual meeting with investors since the biotech entered a prolonged crisis. “Last year was awful. I deeply, deeply regret that,” a calm and confident Sharer told the crowd of several hundred during an hourlong presentation at the Four Seasons Hotel in Westlake Village, California, The Los Angeles Times writes.

He also sought to reassure investors by maintaining Amgen was off to a good start this year and suggested many of Amgen’s woes should be viewed along with problems affecting all drugmakers. “I’m not making any excuses…but things are pretty stormy out there right now.” Some shareholders appeared unconvinced and the meeting turned contentious when investors were invited to make public comments, the paper writes.

One suggested Amgen should begin paying shareholders a dividend to make up for the stock’s steep fall over the last year. Another said she was disgusted with Amgen’s recent performance and was considering selling her shares. “You say you are looking out for the best interest of shareholders. I don’t believe you are,” she told Sharer, according to the Times.

Several questions focused on Sharer’s $13.2 million compensation last year, which included a car and driver and personal use of a company plane. In all, his pay was down 29 percent. Theodore Goldberg, a 73-year-old retired Los Angeles accountant, wants Amgen’s board to overhaul management. “The board has a fiduciary duty to protect stockholders,” Goldberg said before receiving loud applause.

Sharer said he was prepared for the scrutiny. “This is a democracy and I anticipated hard questions,” he said to one questioner. “I regret what has happened this past year, and I understand” your anger. He noted that his most recent annual compensation package was reduced from the year before and the value of his Amgen holdings fell as well. “I felt real economic pain.” Really?

He defended his and other senior executives’ use of corporate planes and cars as a necessity for senior management.

Sharer has been Amgen’s chief executive since 2000; he has been chairman of the board of directors since 2001. But under his stewardship, Amgen is increasingly at risk of losing its place atop the spectacularly lucrative but equally treacherous biotech industry. Safety warnings have been placed on its lucrative anemia drugs, Aranesp and Epogen, which can increase tumor growth in some cancer patients, especially at higher doses. The drugs accounted for more than half of profits in recent years.

In the last year, federal health officials have imposed reimbursement restrictions on the anemia drugs, and their sales and the company’s stock have sunk. Aranesp sales fell nearly 20% last year to $3.2 billion, according to IMS, the Times notes. Congress is also investigating the marketing.

After the meeting, some investors said they remained confident in Amgen’s management and were taking a wait-and-see approach. “I really think they are a good company,” Mary Gow, an 86-year-old investor tells the paper. “The stock has gone up, then gone down. But I am going to stick with it.”

Goldberg, the Los Angeles investor, said afterward that he was considering selling his shares but might wait to see whether the stock recovers soon. “The problem with selling,” he tells the Times with a smile, is “I couldn’t come and yell at these guys anymore.”