Corus has become the latest company to be censured by the Co-operative Insurance Society, after the Manchester-based institutional shareholder surfaced at the steel giant’s annual meeting yesterday to attack the 130 per cent pay rise awarded to its chairman last year. The company, which is shedding 11,000 British jobs, said the award reflected Sir Brian’s enlarged duties as chairman and chief executive.CIS yesterday voted against the reappointment of Eric van Amerongen, the head of Corus’s remuneration committee. Blocking the reappointment of non-executives is a common device for showing disapproval with executive remuneration, which is usually not put to a shareholder vote.Mr van Amerongen was reappointed by 1.72 billion proxy votes, with 23 million proxy votes against.Ian Jones, CIS’s head of corporate governance, said Sir Brian’s pay rise was “highly inappropriate” given the large job losses and general pay freeze at Corus.”To have such a significant difference between the treatment of the head of the company and employees, particularly at this difficult time, poses significant risk to Corus, particularly in terms of staff morale – a risk that is ultimately passed on to shareholders,” he said.Mr Jones said CIS would be protesting at other company meetings. While CIS is best known for its “ethical” investment funds, most of its investment activity involves well-known blue-chip stocks whose corporate governance and environmental standards often fail to meet those of the Co-op.

The society argues that it can only bring about change in the way companies behave if it invests in them.Last week, it claimed to be one of the principal forces behind Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s decision to step down as chairman of easyJet.”Our relationship with companies is an ongoing process and our experience shows that corporate change can and does occur even after [annual meeting] resolutions have been defeated,” said Mr Jones.. The Swedish mobile phone company Ericsson yesterday warned it would not return to profit until next year as it unveiled plans to tap investors for 30bn Swedish kronor (£2bn) of new money. Nokia dropped 4 per cent.In addition, the US telecoms equipment maker Lucent yesterday cut another 6,000 jobs, or around 11 per cent of its workforce, as it reported a 40 per cent drop in second quarter sales.”An improvement in the telecommunications equipment market during the second half of this year was generally anticipated. However, as many operators have recently announced reduced investment plans, we now believe that market conditions will remain weak well into next year,” Ericsson said.The company said it now expected sales of mobile networks to fall more than 10 per cent this year compared with its previous guidance of “flat to down 10 per cent”.The warning came as Ericsson reported weaker-than-expected first quarter pre-tax loss of Skr5.4bn, compared with a loss of Skr4.9bn last time.

Sales fell 26 per cent to Skr37bn.Kurt Hellstr?the president and chief executive, said: “As expected, this past quarter was very challenging. Many operators have recently lowered investment plans further. As sales will be lower than anticipated, with ongoing aggressive cost cutting we plan to return to profit at some point in 2003.”Last year the companyshed about 22,000 jobs.. There was further bad news from the advertising industry yesterday when WPP, the world’s second-largest advertising group warned of a slow recovery this year after a weak 2001. Separately Cordiant, which owns the Bates Worldwide agency, reported a £270m loss after heavy exceptional items, axed the dividend and forecast no revenue growth this year.

Its results had been delayed by several weeks while the struggling group organised fresh financing. It’s going to be a gradual improvement.”Sir Martin said 2003 should show further recovery with 2004 boosted by the US presidential elections and the Athens Olympics. He said there was a “little bit of a structural shift” away from television advertising to other media such as outdoor, cable and satellite.WPP’s first-quarter trading update showed that revenues fell by more than 2 per cent. Stripping out acquisitions, underlying revenue fell by 9 per cent. Net new billings totalled £500m.Cordiant, which was hit by three profits warnings in the last four months of 2001, claimed it had now “rebased the business for a lower revenue level.”Operating profits plunged to £36.5m for the year to December from £61.4m the previous year. But £224m of goodwill write-offs, of which £157m was for the value of its Lighthouse PR and branding business bought two years ago, pushed the group into a heavy loss. There was also a £27m charge to cover the cost of a restructuring programme which has cost 1600 jobs.Michael Bungey, chief executive, admitted that Cordiant had paid too much for some of its deals “Hindsight is a wonderful thing.