Anne Simpson is a woman on a mission with $10,000bn of funds to back her up. The veteran shareholder activist started work last month as the first executive director of the International Corporate Governance Network, an influential grouping that represents the world's biggest investment funds.

At the top of her in-tray is the thorny issue of improving the rights of shareholders in US companies. She told the Financial Times that she plans to focus the network's collective clout to achieve exactly that.