The growing trend of the shareholder revolt

Aviva, our biggest insurer, became only the fourth company in the FTSE 100 ever whose shareholders kicked out the pay deal put forward to them this afternoon.

UK individual and institutional shareholders said no to the pay packages of the top executives, including a controversial bonus for one month of £45,000 for the new UK boss, matched by a fall in share price in the last year of more than a pound.

And late this afternoon, the boss of the ailing Trinity Mirror Group, Sly Bailey, announced she is to leave the company, rather than subject herself to what was set to be a similar humiliation at their Annual General Meeting next week.

In fact in the last seven days Aviva, Trinity Mirror, Carillion, Barclays, Xtstrata, UBS and others have all faced revolts from the people who actually own their companies - from the humble individual shareholder who owns a small chunk of shares, to the large UK institutional group who manage all of our pension funds and savings.

In my book, the sheer number of big corporations who are having to confront shareholders' wrath makes a trend, and with other big firms facing AGMs in the next few weeks there are likely to be more in that list.

Aviva is the first in a very long time to actually lose the vote and tonight they are making clear they will actually make changes to the pay deals, even though they are not legally obliged to do so.

Clearly, the power of embarassment can sometimes be enough.

I've written here before that with more than 40 per cent of the value of all listed firms in the UK owned abroad, it is hard to tell how much appetite for permanent change there will really be.

As in other countries, the debate about high pay is not as high up the political agenda.

Yet the goverment is still set to act to make these kinds of votes binding. With this new spirit of resistance spreading fast among shareholders, I wonder if changing the law is really required.