Shareholder activism may be in the headlines, but it certainly is not new – just ask Cedric Brown, former chief executive of British Gas, who had to suffer the indignity of angry shareholders and trade unions bringing a pig (which they named Cedric) to the company’s AGM to illustrate their claim that he had his snout in the trough after getting a 70% pay rise in 1993.
What has changed, however, is that institutional shareholders are taking a much more active interest in the companies they invest in. And as institutional investors between them hold more than two-thirds of the stock in FTSE 100 companies, they are much more of a force to be reckoned with.
