OMG! It's a shareholder revolt!

In the 1976 film "Network," UBS News Network anchor Howard Beale [Peter Finch] galvanizes the nation when he pursuades his viewers to shout, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" out their windows.

Howard Beale [Peter Finch] delivering his "mad as hell" speech

Well, it seems that in 2012, some of America's shareholders are shouting the same slogan--but this time they're "mad as hell" about the obscene amounts of money being taken away from their dividends and handed over to the CEO's, many of whom are being rewarded for destroying the value of the companies they mismanage!

AP reports on some of the annual meetings that shareholder activists and advisory firms say they are watching most closely this year:

Chesapeake Energy. In 2008, a year when the stock plummeted from about $39 to $16, Chesapeake paid CEO Aubrey McClendon $12 million for his personal collection of antique maps. (A shareholder lawsuit is now forcing him to buy them back.) That same year, Chesapeake paid $3.5 million to sponsor the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder, of which McClendon owned almost 20 percent.

Thursday, under pressure from shareholders, Chesapeake agreed to end a program that allowed McClendon to take personal stakes in company wells. At the end of 2008, the company gave McClendon $75 million to use toward those purchases.

McClendon's salary was $975,000 in 2011, and he received perks that included $500,000 worth of personal use of private jets.

Nabors Industries. Eugene Isenberg, who was CEO for 24 years until he stepped down under pressure in October, was in line for a $100 million severance payment until the company announced a few months later that he would waive it.

In a statement at the time, Isenberg said he had planned to give the money to charity. He still got a $1.3 million salary and a $15.6 million bonus for the year, a period when the company's stock lost more than a quarter of its value.  Source: When investors get heated, CEOs feel the pressure

And the shareholder revolt is not limited to America; it's spread across the Atlantic. Reuters reports:
More than a quarter of Barclays shareholders look set to vote against the British bank's controversial pay plan for bosses and Credit Suisse is also facing a backlash as investors seek a greater share of profits.
Stormy annual shareholder meetings at both banks got underway on Friday with many attendees complaining executives are getting too big a slice of bank income at their expense.

"[Barclays] is a good example of a company which recently ... has been paying three times as much in bonuses as it was in dividends to its own shareholders and it's a good example of shareholders standing up and saying no, this is not acceptable," UK Business Secretary Vince Cable told ITV News.

"You [CreditSuisse top executives] should be ashamed of yourselves for taking so much money away from us. We are the owners of this bank, and you are our employees. We should be the ones who decide what you earn," said Rudolf Weber, to applause from other shareholders.
Source: Source: Credit Suisse and Barclays investors revolt over pay

Let's hope that the shareholder revolt grows from a storm into a hurricane of shareholder fury and demands for reform: "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore!"