Angry shareholders

A number of example this week of potential shareholder power: HSBC is likely to face a significant protest vote againt its renumeration policy believing that the prosed payout is excessive and the performance criteria insufficiently stretching. Last week, almost half of Royal Dutch Shell's investors refused to approve its remuneration report because of concern about retention bonuses for three directors, while almost 40 per cent of shareholders in GlaxoSmithKline also abstained or voted against its report for the same reason. The internet company Yahoo has postponed its annual meeting as its board struggles to escape a shareholder uprising led by the billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn. The potentially rowdy gathering in California was due to be held on July 3 but Yahoo has put it off to an unspecified date. Shareholders are unahappy with Yahoo's failure to agree to the takeover by Microsoft.