Perhaps companies should reconsider holding their annual general meetings around the beginning of May, a time of the year that is pregnant with revolutionary connotations. In the past few weeks there has been a distinct whiff of rebellion in the oxygen-depleted air that is pumped into the large conference halls in which these yearly set-pieces are enacted.

Large numbers of shareholders have voted against remuneration deals at Barclays, Man Group, UBS and Credit Suisse. It is not just the banks that are feeling the wrath of their owners either. Shareholders have thumbed their noses at the boards of AstraZeneca and Inmarsat too and a good slug of investors in Alliance Trust refused to back Katherine Garrett-Cox in a motion brought by an activist hedge fund.