Aviva Plc

Aviva Plc - the world`s fifth largest insurance group - holds 3.78% of Hambledon Mining PLC (operator of the Sekisovskoye gold and silver project in Kazakhstan). Through its subsidiary Morley Fund Management; and in 2007 held 3.24% of Johnson Matthey (see Lloyds TSB).

Since 2008, through its associated fund, Aviva Investors, the group has publicly criticised London-listed Vedanta Resources plc for its failures to observe a sound health, safety and environment policy.

It used its relatively minor 0.3% stake in Vedanta to vote against the company's remuneration reports at the mining company's annual general meetings in both 2010 and 2011.

In a statement to shareholders on 27 July 2011, Stephanie Maier, Corporate Responsibility Manager at Aviva Investors said: "Given that [Vedanta] had 26 fatalities [in 2010-2011] , we find it hard to understand how they could justify [their] bonus payout" - which amounted to just under £1,000,000 for the company's three top directors.

When a vote was taken on this part of the agenda, 86.29% assented to the proposed remuneration package, but 13.71% voted against it [Dow Jones Newswires, 27 July 2011; see also Guardian, 28 July 2011, Reuters 27 July 2011].

The "protest" vote was all the more significant, given that Vedanta's chairman, Anil Agarwal, along with his family through their Volcan Trust, own just over 62% of the company's equity; in effect more than a third of independent investors followed Aviva's lead.Cateogry:active in Zambia