Last night Brexit got done. We exited the EU after 47 years. But we will need to resume the conversation to secure a trade deal. That still leaves room for many more arguments within the UK and with the EU.
It might be preferable to have some alignment on product and financial regulations but in the latter area the EU either follows well behind the UK anyway, or creates regulations like MiFID II that are overly complex or simply incomprehensible. The Shareholder Rights Directive is so badly written that it can and is being effectively ignored by the UK in the problem areas of shareholder voting and of nominee accounts.
The Investors Chronicle (IC) have published an article by Mary McDougall this week entitled “Why Shareholder Votes Matter”. It shows how the nominee account system has disenfranchised most individual shareholders as they either cannot vote their shares, or it is made so difficult to do that they don’t bother.
I contributed to the IC article because I have a lot of knowledge of this area having pioneered the ShareSoc campaign on the issue and having experience of using multiple platforms over many years (see https://www.sharesoc.org/campaigns/shareholder-rights-campaign/ ).
The article mentions Sirius Minerals (SXX) which is currently subject to a takeover bid via a scheme of arrangement. A very large proportion of the shares are held by individual investors in nominee accounts but because of the voting rules on Court hearings all of them will only get one vote by the nominee operator who might not even vote at all. That’s because nominee accounts are generally “pooled” with only one name on the share register as a “Member” of the company – and that name is that of the nominee operator (i.e. the platform).
Another example that shows where votes are important is that of the forthcoming AGM scheduled for the 12th February at RWS Holdings (RWS), an AIM company. You might think that this will be a routine matter with just the standard resolutions. But not so. There is actually a resolution to waive the need for a Concert Party that might acquire more than 30% of the shares to make an offer for the company under the City Takeover Code. The Concert Party comprises Chairman Andrew Brode, Diane Brode and a Trust they control. They already hold 32.8% of the shares but as there is also a share buyback resolution that might increase their percentage holdings, and hence trigger the need for an offer, a waiver is required. I voted against both resolutions – I always vote against share buy-backs unless there are very good reasons, and I don’t like public companies to have shareholders with more than 30%.
You can see that just a few private shareholders in nominee accounts might affect the outcome as the Concert Party cannot vote on the waiver. But will they?
Regardless I encourage shareholders in RWS to vote their shares – if you hold shares in an ISA your platform operator has a legal obligation to cast your votes as you direct.
The IC article mentions that the Law Commission is currently looking at the problems and legal uncertainties created by nominee accounts, but it also discloses that they only expect a “scoping study” on intermediated securities to be published in Autumn 2020. No great urgency there then!
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
