Hardly surprising but Exxon Mobil's leaders have defeated the descendents of Standard Oil's founder John D Rockefeller. For anyone wanting a bit of history, Exxon and Mobil were the bastard children born after the anti-trust break-up of Standard Oil.

Those descendents wanted Exxon Mobil to improve its corporate governance by splitting the chairman and CEO roles, now held by Rex Tillerson. They also wanted the company to commit to reducing greenhouse gases, and to start embracing alternative energy. As the New York Times reports, the push to overhaul the company's governance received only 39.5 per cent of the non-binding vote, saving Tillerson plenty of embarrassment.

Exxon Mobil made a $10.89 billion profit in the first three months of the year, the second highest on record, and in the last 10 days, its shares have traded as high as $94. So the shareholders don't really care about these high-falutin' matters like governance and saving the planet. They just want the money and for the dissidents, it was just a case of bad timing.

Still, the world's biggest oil company has worked hard for that money with Forbes reporting that it spent more than $3 million lobbying the Bush administration on energy tax credits, climate change and other issues in the first quarter of the year.

As Greenpeace points out, Exxon Mobil has spent some $22 million funding the anti-climate change industry. There's no sign the company is going to change its attitude.