Annual general meetings are sometimes stormy affairs, but the tempest swirling around the London AGM of the oil giant BP this morning looks unprecedented. At least half a dozen vociferous and angry groups are set to lay siege to the British Petroleum board and its American chief executive, Bob Dudley, when they go through the annual ritual of facing their shareholders at the Excel convention centre in London's Docklands.
Fishermen and women from the Gulf Coast in the United States who were hit by the oil spill that followed the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig will be joined in protests at the meeting by indigenous communities who are angry about the company's involvement in tar sands extraction in Canada. The corporate world will also be sending protesters, as some powerful shareholders are far from happy with BP's new-