Collective Investments

Seminar on Woodford Legal Case

Yesterday evening I attended a webinar hosted by ShareSoc on a proposed legal action over the substantial losses suffered by investors in the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF). It was chaired by Mark Northway and Cliff Weight with other speakers being Boz Michaelowska from legal firm Leigh Day and David Ricketts. The latter is a financial journalist who has written a book entitled “When the Fund Stops” which covers the past events at the Woodford funds and which will be published ...

Strategic Equity Capital update

 by Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director Please note the views expressed in this blog are my personal ones. I hold shares in SEC and Gresham House. Within 6 months of manager change and change of lead fund manager and break on SLA marketing JV, the largest shareholder puts stock into hands of an arb. What will happen next? The background is in my 2 previous blogs: https://www.sharesoc.org/blog/collective-investments/investment-trust-discounts-what-to-do-about-them-and-sec-example/ https://www.sharesoc.org/blog/collective-investments/nearly-20-vote-against-strategic-equity-capitalsec-agm-resolution/ RIT recently sold its 13% holding in SEC at a discount, of 22.8% - 9.47m shares traded at 202.5p on17th ...

(Nearly) 20% Vote Against Strategic Equity Capital (SEC) AGM Resolution

19.25% of votes cast were against the continuation of SEC, 13.8% and 12.9% respectively were against the reappointments of SEC Chairman Richard Hills and Richard Locke as director. See https://www.strategicequitycapital.com/sites/default/files/proxy-voting-results-2020_0.pdf The RNS announced but did not mention the actual votes cast. Strategic Equity Capital PLC announces that at the Annual General Meeting held on 11 November 2020 all 14 resolutions proposed were duly passed. Although the ordinary resolution for the continuation of the Company was passed comfortably, the Directors are cognisant of the fact that ...

Investment Trust Discounts, What To Do About Them and SEC Example

In this article, I argue that discounts are bad for those invested in a trust, and the Board of the investment trust should look to reduce any discount. However, for those thinking of investing in the trust the discount might be an opportunity. The question is, how real is that opportunity or is it just a 'value trap'? We look at why discounts can arise and the measures that can be taken to eliminate them or even move the trust to a ...

The Advantages of Investment Trusts

The AIC has issued a video which spells out some of the advantages of investment trusts over open-ended funds. They spell out that with most investment products you don’t have a say, but with investment trusts you do because you can vote on important decisions about how your company is run and what it invests in. You can also attend the Annual General Meeting (AGM) to meet, and question, the board directors and the investment manager. Investment companies also have independent ...

Fund Charges and Transaction Costs

In 2015-2017, the FCA reviewed and consulted on the asset management industry and one of its key recommendations was greater clarity on charges. Chris Sier was appointed to make recommendations on how this should be done. His focus was on pension funds and the costs they incurred from their fund managers. Today, I saw a LinkedIn post by Chris, which I found illuminating and contains links to two further articles, for those who are interested in this area. Chris, who was ...

Scottish Mortgage Investment Policy and LSE RNS Announcements

The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) have issued their Annual Report and AGM Notice. Readers who hold this trust will not need reminding that it has shown a remarkable performance over the last few months. That’s when the stock market has been decimated by the Covid-19 epidemic and the share prices of many other similar trusts and of the companies they hold have fallen sharply. Last year SMT achieved a total share price return of 12.7% to the end of March and ...

Fund Charges – and Discounts

by Alan Reeder, ShareSoc member The thorny subject of Fund charges and discounts has been much discussed in the Press recently – along with the pros and cons of investing in Investment Trusts versus Funds. Amid all the discussions of where to invest, a factor often overlooked is the difference in Annual Management Charge (AMC) levied by the Fund Manager.  It is important to bear in mind that although this AMC can vary from one broking House to another – it is the ...

Bank Dividends and Fundsmith Performance

The bad news for many private investors is that most of the major listed UK banks are suspending dividend payments, even ones already announced. This is after they received a letter from the Bank of England requesting that they do so. The dividends are unlikely to be resumed before the end of the year. This is surely a prudent measure as the banks will undoubtedly have many requests for loans from companies to tide them over the virus crisis, while other ...

ShareSoc Campaign has Successful Outcome at Albion

ShareSoc is pleased with the outcome of this consultation with shareholders following the shareholders 30% vote against the fee proposal at the General Meeting in August 2019. This shows:...

Miton UK Smaller Companies Fund In Decline

There was an interesting article published a couple of days ago by Citywire on the problems at the LF Miton UK Smaller Companies Fund. The fund is managed by...

Directors’ and Fund Managers’ Pay is Excessive

On the latest data, the pay of FTSE-100 CEOs has fallen slightly. A report from the CIPD and High Pay Centre notes that the average pay has fallen from...