This month will see a flurry of major corporate Annual General Meetings (AGMs). While company directors busily hone their patter in preparation for facing their shareholders, activists are gearing up to make the AGM season an uncomfortable experience for many.
The Royal Bank of Scotland (19 April) will be facing criticism for its involvement in the tar sands industry – dubbed ‘the most destructive project on earth’ – as well as many other fossil fuel projects. RBS is the seventh biggest global investor in companies that operate in the tar sands and, having been bailed out by the British government, is now 83-per-cent taxpayer-owned. The ‘oil and gas bank’ will have to answer to representatives of First Nations communities in Canada who are seeing their traditional territories carved up and polluted by tar sands oil extraction; and a campaigner from Madagascar, who is trying to stop a new tar sands project there.
