Shareholder rebellion occurs when the owners of a corporation work to throw out management or oppose their decisions. Shareholder rebellion may occur at an annual general meeting or through a proxy battle. Shareholders may also threaten to collapse a firm's stock price through concentrated selling.[1] In 1998, the Rockefeller family led a shareholder revolt against Exxon over its climate change policy.[2] In 2005, Michael Eisner retired after Walt Disney's nephew, Roy Disney, led a shareholder revolt, claiming Eisner was a micromanager who had caused a creative brain drain.[3] In 2010, BP[4] and Shell faced a shareholder revolt over their Canadian tar sands policy.[5]
Recently, shareholder rebellions have occurred over the issue of executive compensation at Cable and Wireless[6] and Shell;[7] Shell in response unveiled a plan to curb executive compensation and bonuses.[8]
According to some analysts, institutional shareholders have been lax about holding management accountable because they were concentrating on picking correct stocks rather than protecting their interests in the stocks they owned.[9]
Shareholder revolts are becoming more common, with a record number of advisory “Say on Pay” votes in the US failing to win majority support in 2018.[10]
^Frentrop, Paul (2009). The First Known Shareholder Activist: The Colorful Life and Times of Isaac le Maire (1559–1624), in Frentrop/Jonker/Davis 2009, 11–26
^Frentrop, Paul; Jonker, Joost; Davis, S. (ed.), (2009). Shareholder Rights at 400: Commemorating Isaac Le Maire and the First Recorded Expression of Investor Advocacy (The Hague: Remix Business Communications, 2009)
^Gelderblom, Oscar; De Jong, Abe; Jonker, Joost (2010). Putting Le Maire into Perspective: Business Organization and the Evolution of Corporate Governance in the Dutch Republic, 1590–1610, in J. Koppell, ed., Origins of Shareholder Advocacy. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan)
^Mueller, Dennis C. (ed.), (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Capitalism, p. 333. (New York: Oxford University Press)
^Hansmann, Henry; Pargendler, Mariana (2013). The Evolution of Shareholder Voting Rights: Separation of Ownership and Consumption. (Yale Law Journal, Vol. 123, pp. 100–165, 2014)
