US companies including Bank of America, American Express and Whole Foods are to be targeted by activist shareholders over plans to replace their chief executives, in a further sign of investors' increasing power in corporate America.

The Laborers' International Union of North America, whose pension funds manage about $30bn, said it had filed proposals with 14 companies asking them to detail succession planning policies and put them to a vote in their annual meetings.

The move takes advantage of a recent decision by the Securities and Exchange Commission to relax rules that prevented a shareholder vote on succession, long regarded as the responsibility of boards.

The need for an orderly CEO succession was highlighted by BofA's long and tortuous search for a chief executive, which ended on Wednesday with the appointment of Brian Moynihan after several external candidates had turned the job down.

News of the initiative on succession planning comes a day after the SEC passed a raft of reforms that will force companies to provide more information on the pay of executives and the background of boards. The decisions underscore a regulatory agenda by the SEC's new management, led by the chairman Mary Schapiro, that is increasingly moving towards empowering shareholders.

Liuna's proposals ask companies to “adopt and disclose a written and detailed CEO succession policy”, but stop short of demanding a list of potential candidates for the top job.

“We are not interested in telling companies who the CEO should be but we are interested in making sure that boards are paying attention and they are doing succession planning,” said Richard Metcalf of Liuna, which has 500,000 members.

After failing to convince companies to put succession planning to a vote for two years, Liuna had secured a vote for its proposal at the 2010 shareholder meeting of Whole Foods, he said. The retailer did not have an immediate comment.

Mr Metcalf said he expected similar proposals to be adopted at other companies.

American Express did not have an immediate comment. BofA declined to comment.