Xero chief executive Sukhinder Singh Cassidy has sold all her shares in the company, unnerving investors at a time when the accounting software group’s chairman, David Thodey, is trying to win shareholder support to award her a more generous pay deal that is less dependent on the performance of Xero’s flagging share price.

United States-based Singh Cassidy is one of the ASX’s highest-paid chief executives, but her remuneration package has become a sore point as the company’s plummeting shares have left a large part of her share-based compensation worthless. Thodey has been meeting investors to try to convince them to agree to new terms that will bring the chief executive’s take-home pay closer to that of her peers in Silicon…