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With 2.8 million shareholders, Lloyds Banking Group directors come to Glasgow this Friday to face shareholders who feel the Lloyds TSB takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland has let them down badly.

Of those, around two million were shareholders of HBOS, a legacy of the Halifax Building Society flotation, and they have reason to be grateful to Lloyds TSB for sacrificing its conservative reputation and taking on colossal write-downs.

More generally, there are growing signs of shareholders getting active in making their presence felt, as they reckon that directors have not been representing and protecting their interests as well as they could or should.

The UK Shareholders Association is trying to raise funds for a legal challenge to the former Lloyds TSB directors.

The extent of organisation of these small-scale investors is very limited, and it's hard to see how they could co-ordinate such an action.

Much better organised and resourced are institutional investors, who are also waking up to their potential clout.

The focus so far is on tackling the directors' remuneration committee reports.

As Robert Peston blogged yesterday, the links between executive pay and corporate performance, and between top pay and median earnings, have gone way out of kilter.

The Government's bank investment agency, UK Financial Investments, pushed the 'no' vote on Royal Bank of Scotland's remuneration committee report above 80% of shareholdings.

Shell recently faced a 59% vote against its directors' remuneration committee report last month.

Likewise a shareholder revolt at Bellway builders and Provident Financial. It was reported yesterday that continental companies having to amend their proposed remuneration packages include Volvo, DSM, Carrefour and Heineken.

A striking part of this is the extent to which institutional investors have been passive until now.

An audit just published by the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, and carried out by RImetrics, looked at the involvement of three big institutional investors controlling £700 billion of assets.

Of that, it found £130 billion is not regularly voted. There is inconsistent engagement with managers.

There's an estimate of £350 billion that is "rarely, if ever, engaged".

Here's the incredible figure: a total of only 11 individuals were identified who are responsible for the implementation of environmental, social and governance policies for those £700 billion of assets, held in upwards of 3000 companies across the world.

Another survey, published today by the UK Sustainable Investment Forum, showed 'Responsible Investment' policies in pension funds are rapidly increasing the engagement in the companies where they invest and control much of the British economy.

Two years ago, a third of pension funds had no RI policy, and that is now down to one fifth. Of those with such a policy, four fifths monitor it.

The difference is being made by more activist trustees, the survey found. If you're in the BT pension fund - although it faces a daunting funding gap - you get top ranking from the watchdog.

Barclays, HBOS and BP are well up there as well. The future of corporate governance comes back, after all, to your investments and your pension.