SEVEN directors on the board of Merck received $85,000 (£47,000) in shares on the day that the drugs maker shocked Wall Street with news that it would withdraw Vioxx, The Times has learnt.

Two days earlier five directors received a total of just under $10,000 in shares for attending the board meeting at which the decision to pull Merck’s controversial painkiller was made.

According to documents filed with regulators, the seven directors, including Wendell Weeks, president and chief operating officer of Corning; William Harrison, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase; and Anne Tatlock, chairman and chief executive of Fiduciary Trust Company, each received an allocation of between 340 and 378 shares in Merck at the bombed-out price of $33.00 on September 30. Peter Wendell, Samuel Thier, Willaim Bowen and Lawrence Bossidy also received shares.

On the same day, Merck unnerved Wall Street when the pharmaceuticals giant said it would voluntarily withdraw the bestselling anti-inflammatory treatment amid concerns that the medicine might cause heart problems in patients.

The allocation was made after shares in Merck had already plunged 27 per cent, wiping $25 billion off the value of the company. The allotment, relates to a quarterly retainer which directors are paid as part of a deferred compensation scheme.

Additional filings show that Mr Wendell, a general partner at Sierra Ventures, Mr Thier, a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Mr Bossidy, the former chief executive of Honeywell International also received between $1,200 and $2,400 in shares on September 28 in payment for their attendence at the board meeting at which the decision to drop Vioxx was finally sealed.

The news triggered lawsuits from users of the drug who have suffered heart problems and prompted analysts to caution that a new version of the drug is unlikely to be approved by regulators this month.