Shareholder spring clocks up three more casualties Jeff Harris, chairman of industrial materials group Cookson, suffered a personal rebuke at the hands of shareholders after his plea to support its remuneration report was defied. The rebellion came despite the company announcing long awaited plans to conduct a strategic review which could see it split in two. His appeal came in response to questions over directors' share options totalling £20m. The company's largest shareholder Cevian, chaired by Labour peer Lord Myners, was one of the investors that raised the issue. Yesterday after Cevian, which has a 20pc stake in Cookson, was granted a seat on the board, it put out a statement backing the company. However over 31pc of shareholders voted against the company's remuneration report with a further 1pc failing to back it. The members of the company's remuneration committee also suffered rebellions with Emma Fitzgerald, Jan Oosterveld, Jeff Hewitt, Peter Hill and John Sussens all seeing over 13pc of shareholders failing to back their re-election. It is understood Standard Life was behind the rebellion. In his letter to shareholders Mr Harris said the company was aware of criticism but had "undertaken a full review of the issues" and was satisfied that there was "no reason for it other than the full vesting of the awards." Yesterday Mr Harris said: "The board continues to listen very carefully to views expressed by shareholders and will be taking these into account along with the result of today's vote on the remuneration report, as remuneration policy is formulated going forward." Prudential also suffered at the hands of its investors with 30pc of them voting against the pay deal it was handing directors. Chairman Harvey McGrath defended the result, saying the "vast majority" of shareholders voted in favour of the deal. Prudential paid its directors a total of £14.6m last year, up from £10.2m in 2010.