U.K. moves to prevent shareholder intimidation

The U.K.'s High Court and science minister each made moves on Wednesday to make it more difficult for animal rights extremists to target shareholders of pharmaceutical companies. Both moves were prompted by a campaign launched earlier this week by Campaign Against Huntingdon Life Sciences against shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline (LSE:GSK; GSK).

The court granted GSK an injunction against the animal rights group, which wrote letters to individual GSK shareholders threatening to post their personal information on the Internet unless they sell their shares within two weeks. The injunction bans further threats to publish shareholders' personal details on any website and bans any further contact with individual shareholders. ...