The Chief Secretary to the Treasury addressed investor relations professionals this morning at the annual IR Society conference. Asked by John Dawson, chairman of the IR Society, whether Britain was currently experiencing a “shareholder spring”, given the recent trends at corporate AGMs and in particular the events at Aviva to challenge governance policies, Alexander answered that he hoped we were.

“Shareholders should take a more active role in the companies they own,” he said. “The government is taking action to enable this. I believe remuneration could be the least of the issues to be tackled by greater shareholder action – there are potentially much wider issues about to come out.”

Other speakers at the conference included Rich Ricci, the co-chief executive of corporate and investment banking at Barclays, a sponsor of the conference, who said that he believed global rules and regulation – and a global timetable for implementation – was necessary to restore the corporate-bank relationship.

The Eurozone crisis was also discussed during the day, with two-thirds of the audience voting that they thought Greece would exit the Euro by the end of 2012; and speakers from Slaughter and May, Inchcape plc, HSBC and RBS addressed how debt is handled when a company is in crisis.