Ahead of the Rio Tinto AGMs, Manifest flagged up its concerns regarding the re-election of Sir Roderick Eddington in our meeting business report. Manifest's US partners, Proxy Governance, issued an 'against' recommendation on his re-election.

The results of the voting the AGMs in London and Sydney have now been released. Each of the director election resolutions was decided by way of a joint electorate action - i.e. the aggregate outcome of the votes cast at the two meetings determined the result.

Eddington's re-election was supported by 59.14% of the votes cast, with 32.33% against and 8.53% submitting positive abstentions. Total dissent was thus 40.86%, making this the third highest show of dissent on a director election in the S&P/ASX 100 in the last 12 months and the fourth highest in the FTSE 100 over the same period.

Five other resolutions at the meetings (including one voted only by the shareholders of the Australian holding company) saw significant dissent, ranging between 14.5% and 19.7%, the highest being in relation to the remuneration report. Further details of the voting and other recent contentious votes are available on Manifest VoteWatch.