Eggs and shoes fly as investors vent their anger at directors

Source: guardian.co.uk

In more normal times, shareholder meetings were relatively genteel affairs. A smattering of people, many retired, would show up, ask a few questions and approve the various resolutions before demolishing the wine and sandwiches. A chief executive was more likely to be challenged over the quality of the biscuits than the finer details of the balance sheet. But now revolution is in the air as investors vent their fury over the huge destruction in shareholder value over the past couple of years.

Yesterday Gary Keogh became the public face of shareholder anger when he pitched rotten eggs at the board of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) at its meeting in Dublin. His protest echoed the violent scenes in Belgium last month when Fortis was forced to suspend its extraordinary meeting after the bank's investors threw shoes at the board and sang the Marseillaise before storming the stage.

With steel giant ArcelorMittal's annual general meeting on Tuesday disrupted by workers throwing smoke-bombs, shareholder gatherings have become one of the financial crisis's key flashpoints.

Bank shareholders are particularly irate because plunging share prices have been accompanied by the cancelling of dividend payments, which many people relied on. The boards of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Barclays were both heavily criticised at their recent AGMs, but directors were spared physical action.



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/14/banking-royalbankofscotlandgroup

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Some people are getting ticked-off.

If they are then it is not making the news.

Another item in the same paper.

Amec shareholders revolt at chief's 13% pay rise
Shareholders have delivered a damning verdict on a 13% pay rise for Samir Brikho, the chief executive of consultancy group Amec, by almost voting down the remuneration report.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/14/amec-executive-pay-bonuses

It could well happen again one of these days.

How long ago are we talking?

Bill

Shareholders have been a pretty tame lot for the most part. Do you know much about union history in this country? Whiskey rebellion, Shays rebellion, Wobblies, Pinkertons and the Mine Workers, draft riots, jobless army in the 1930s, general strikes?

America is a corporate state. Laws for the oligarchy, by the oligarchy, to protect the oligarchy. The first group to do more than picket outside a CEO's summer mansion in the Hamptons will have the full power of the Federal government come down upon them like the wrath of an angry god. The corporate media will dig up old phrases like "anarchists" and "Marxist Terror Groups."

Oswego "reason #32045 why I'm only visiting this country" Atheist

Its gambling.

Or the real sad cases that don't even get out of their own houses before the rampage.

Kind of like protesting at a Hitler rally

i am.

Americans don't do that because the ones who know don't have access, and the ones with access don't know.

and can't go to the meetings.

Americans have been deluded into thinking that they own stock -- but all they own is a share of a fund in a company that owns stock. They don't own stock directly.

Most of the people who actually own stock are part of the problem.

Ninety percent of the stock in the US is owned by 10 percent of the population. Guess who they are.

Especially since the consensus school that emerged after WWII (see Richard Hofstadter) reinforced the idea that the US was a largely classless society -- or at least one in which the interests of the capital class and the working class largely converged.

Europeans, given their long history of feudal rule and privilege, have no such illusions. This is why French workers flood the streets over an attempt to make the work week more than 35 hours, while we numbly sit by and allow employers to squeeze more blood from a stone.

dittoheads who keep making excuses for those who screw them and everyone else here. Shit... just read DU when Code Pink makes noise... you can see Americans disdain for truth in action..

hired help on a contingency basis.

Love to see me some of this in the USA!

we have plenty of well deserving targets.