Three days after the Altria/PM annual meeting (see above), Reynolds American (Reynolds) held its own annual shareholders’ meeting. It is the holding company of RJ Reynolds Tobacco, the second largest cigarette company in the USA, which manufactures and markets about one third of the cigarettes sold there, and is the only part of the former RJ Reynolds group not bought up by Japan Tobacco. As with Altria, Reynolds found itself facing a record number of activists, including Anne Morrow Donley, co-founder and president of the anti-tobacco group Virginia GASP.

The activists dominated the meeting, though unfortunately for them, …