I recently received the Annual Report of Worldwide Healthcare Trust (WWH). This is one of those companies that has stopped sending out proxy voting forms for their AGM. The Registrar is Link Asset Services who seem to be making it as difficult as possible for shareholders on the register to vote. You either have to contact them to request a proxy voting form, or register for their on-line portal. I don’t want to register (and the last time I tried it was not easy), I just want to vote!
But as I have mentioned before, I have provided a form that anyone can use to submit as a proxy instruction – see here: https://www.roliscon.com/proxy-voting.html. There is an option you can use if you are not on the share register but in a nominee account.
As regards WWH, performance last year was OK with net asset value total return up 13.7% although that’s less than their benchmark which managed 21.1%. Relative underperformance was mainly attributed to being underweight in the global pharmaceutical sector. The fund manager (OrbiMed Capital) believes there are better opportunities elsewhere such as in emerging markets and biotechnology. We will no doubt see in due course whether those bets are right.
But I do have some concerns about corporate governance at this trust. Not only are the directors highly paid, but two of them have been on the board for over 9 years, including the Chairman Sir Martin Smith. He also has a “number of other directorships and business interests” without them being spelled out. The UK Corporate Governance Code spells out quite rightly that directors who have served on the board for more than 9 years cannot be considered “independent”.
In addition Director Sven Borho is a Managing Partner of OrbiMed so he is clearly not independent either. So 3 of the 6 directors cannot be considered independent. I therefore give you my personal recommendations for how to vote on the resolutions at the AGM (or by proxy of course) of the following:
Vote AGAINST resolutions 2, 3, 7, 9, 14 and 15. Vote FOR all the others.
This is not “box ticking”, it’s about ensuring directors of trust companies do not become stale, not too sympathetic to the fund managers and not too geriatric. The excuses given for the directors I am voting against to remain do not hold water.
Nominee Accounts and Voting
As regards the difficulty of voting if you hold your shares in a nominee account (as most do now for ISAs etc), ShareSoc has some positive news after years of campaigning on this issue (including a lot of personal effort from me).
The Government BEIS Department have commissioned a review of “intermediated securities” by the Law Commission. See this ShareSoc blog post for more information: https://tinyurl.com/y4wk4edz . Please do support the ShareSoc campaign on this issue.
It is important that all shareholders can vote, whether you are in a nominee account or on the register, and you need to be able to vote easily. Bearing in mind the furore over the proposed requirement for voters in general elections to at least show some id before voting, which has been criticised, wrongly in my view, for possibly deterring voting, it is odd that this issue of disenfranchising shareholders has not been tackled sooner.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
