On 8th of December we (ShareSoc and Sirius Claim Group) held a webinar to provide a progress update. The event was very well attended. There were 258 registrants and over 200 attended on the night. Links to the video of the webinar are here and copies of the slides here for those who were unable to attend.
There were a good number of questions and answers at the end. If we were unable to answer your question during the event we will try and follow up with these where we have contact details.
The webinar contained some interesting statistics gathered by ShareSoc and presented by Cliff Weight before the update from Sirius Claim Group.
As discussed in the webinar, we have been working through large volumes of information and we are in the process of completing a briefing pack which outlines and where possible evidences our areas of concern.
We are looking to review this with potential legal partners early next year and, depending on their assessment, we should then know if we have any potential claims and whether they are viable to pursue; there are no guarantees that this will be the case.
Please be assured that we have covered a wide set of subject areas in our work, so anything that you are thinking of, we probably covered. However, and for clarity, at this stage we are unable to share what the potential claims are or whom they maybe against. This is to protect both ourselves and the possibility of the claims.
We will bring you further updates in due course as events unfold, so please keep your eye out for them, and finally I wish you and your families a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Paul Anscombe
Sirius Claim Group
Keep up the good work, having lost >£40k, anything that can be done to bring those responsible to account, will be welcome!
Hi Paul
Thank you for the update and all the hard work you and others, including those at ShareSoc, have carried out on our behalf. As you may remember I was quite a vociferous supporter of the efforts to get a better deal for all shareholders a year ago following the derisory offer from AAL. I also encouraged other to join ShareSoc and attended the shareholder meeting. A couple of days ago I received an email from ShareSoc as my membership is up for renewal end of this week. I wanted to check whether the fact I do or do not decide to renew will have any detrimental affect on my participation in any pursuit of claims against AAL etc – I assume not. There are bound to be many others who receive similar emails shortly as I am pretty sure I was one of the first to sign up. I realise that you need to be careful not to divulge too much due to the sensitive nature of you current investigations but some sort of Facebook Group or similar to allow basic communication of progress etc would be good. Should I remain a full member of ShareSoc, I am not sure many others will rejoin as there were many who had their doubts last year. I do appreciate ShareSoc have contributed a lot but they did receive a huge financial boost last year due to the Sirius affect last year I am sure. I look forward to hearing from you with regards to your thoughts on this. Kind regards Paul
Paul, You are right. ShareSoc membership is not a prerequisite of membership of the SSSG / Sirius Claim, although of course continued support through full membership is always appreciated.
However, I disagree that Sirius Shareholder Group was a huge financial boost for ShareSoc. It did lead to 1,000 new members, but only about 190 joined as full (ie paying) members. Sirius led to huge amounts of time and (unpaid) effort from ShareSoc directors and other volunteers, which could have been channelled elsewhere, but ShareSoc decided to allocate its limited resources on behalf of Sirius shareholders.
I would hope that former Sirius shareholders join ShareSoc, not just because of the work we are doing on behalf of former SIrius shareholders, but because of the broad range of services and campaigning activities we do. As well as SIrius, we are currently undertaking 6 major campaigns-
Woodford
Aviva
Law Commission/nominees/shareholder rights
Improvements in voting and engagement
SVS/ITI
Special Administration Regime (SAR) reform
Improvements in regulation of AIM.
Cliff Weight, Director, ShareSoc
Just a question or two!
I recently read that Cliff Weight is an Anglo American shareholder!
Is this potentially a conflict of interest and could it mean that Sharesoc may well be just going through the motions so to speak?
Is there any possibility at all of achieving a fair result against such a huge company with so much money and so many powerful connections involved?
Grant Smith
Dear Grant,
If I owned a million pounds of Anglo shares it might be a conflict of interest, but I don’t. The small number of Anglo shares I own is not a conflict. I bought them when I saw that they were buying Sirius at what I thought was a very low price, in my view they should have paid more.
ShareSoc directors have to declare any potential conflicts of interest. As a matter of routine when we post a blog or write an article we try to always say if we hold shares and that we cannot give financial advice. ShareSoc have expended enormous energy on the Sirius Campaign – it most certainly is not “going through the motions”.
We think there is a good possibility of achieving a result. We are in discussions with a firm of lawyers who have sued Anglo on more than one occasion before.
Regards,
Cliff
PS I have emailed Grant to ask to discuss his concerns by phone and why he thinks this way and I await his call.
Hi Cliff.
I’d just like to say thank you for the telephone call earlier, I have cut and pasted our correspondence below omitting phone numbers and mail addresses, hope you don’t mind?
Can I start by apologising for the comments I made in my first post and would like to thank you and all of your colleagues for the dedication and contribution you all make on a voluntary basis for some of us that either do not appreciate it or are not aware of what you all do behind the scenes.
You have now explained the situation and reassured me in the steps and long drawn out procedure Sharesoc must follow so I wish you all well and can only hope you can achieve some sort of result for us (Sirius Investors who were sc***d!).
Please let me (us) know if there is anything we can do collectively that would help.
Grant
Dear Cliff.
I can tell by your response that I’ve inadvertently pushed buttons that I’d not intended to by the way you’ve reacted.
Yes, I asked questions that may well have been necessary, but I don’t or didn’t know the extent of your investment in AAL hence not knowing if there may have been a conflict of interest or not, but these questions need to be aired.
The fact that you stated you had shares in AAL in the article I read should have been enough to allay my slightly suspicious mind though.
Thank you for replying to me and offering to reassure me, I was relieved of £19,000 when AAL bought out Sirius and that is a bitter pill to swallow for someone like me!
I will contact you tomorrow if you have time.
Kind regards.
Grant.
Dear Grant.
Please, please, please. You may not know how many days and man weeks I have spent unpaid working on behalf of Sirius Minerals’ shareholders. But please have a look at all the hard work I have put into this cause. It is huge.
You can rest assured that neither Paul nor I are “going through the motions”.
I am not sure how I can reassure sure you on this one. Please give me a ring on ***************
What is your phone number and then we can have a chat.
I do own some Anglo shares. I wish I had bought more at the low price. The numbers I own are not material to affect my decisions on Sirius. It is a small part of my portfolio.
Regards,
Cliff