Company News

Bid for SABMiller (SAB) Queried

One of my contacts has questioned what is happening in the bid for brewer SABMiller by AB Inbev. Here is what he had to say: "The concern raised is that here appears to be a really anomalous situation which is in danger of setting a terribly bad precedent. The two largest shareholders in SAB Miller are Altria (Philip Morris) and the Santo Domingo family of Colombia. They have agreed to a deal for beneficial tax reasons (to them) whereby they accept a ...

Open Ended Property Funds Should Be Avoided

Commercial property funds are popular with private investors as historically they have provided high dividends with relative price stability. But the announcement yesterday by Standard Life Investments that it had suspended trading in its UK Property Fund has further undermined confidence in the property sector after it was already depressed because of the impact of Brexit. The suspension means that investors are unable to sell their holdings. This fund, one of the largest open-ended property funds, is an "open-ended" fund - in ...

Brexit Result Impact and Tesco AGM

The result is in, and the people have spoken. We will now leave the EU, unless of course there is some more re-negotiation or other fudge which would probably require some U-turns by politicians. They are of course adept at finessing such manoeuvres so don't be surprised if the outcome is not quite as simple as it might first appear. The pound has already fallen substantially (I am writing this just before the stock market opened). Is that a disaster? Not quite ...

Whitbread AGM Report – More Fun Than Lloyds?

The Whitbread Annual General Meeting took place at Church House Conference Centre in Westminster on the 21st June. This was one of the few FTSE-100 AGMs I have attended where the Chairman seemed to pay good attention to the views of private shareholders rather than considering it a tedious 2 hours that had to be suffered. In addition shareholders (and I am a new one) could learn a great deal about the strategy of the company and its affairs from the meeting. ...

Berkeley Results, Pay, Brexit and AIM

We are now definitely in the usual summer doldrums in the market, compounded by the uncertainty over Brexit. It is obvious that private investors have been taking their money...

BSD Crown EGM Requisition

BSD Crown Ltd (BSD) is an Israeli company which has been listed in London for a number of years and has a substantial number of retail shareholders. It was originally a technology business under the names Geo Interactive and Emblaze but in May 2014 it acquired Willi-Food Investments and became primarily a food importing company. On the 9th May 2016, investor Y.W. Management requested the Board of Directors of BSD Crown to convene a General Meeting of shareholders for the purpose of ...

WPP Pay and AGM Report

So 33% of investors in WPP voted against Sir Martin Sorrell's pay package of £70 million for last year at yesterday's AGM which made him the highest paid FTSE CEO. That has been reported in the financial media as indicating strong dissatisfaction with the figure, but surely the really astonishing aspect is that obviously 66% voted in favour (and that's ignoring the abstentions). It seems 66% of the mainly institutional voters think that pay at that level is perfectly reasonable! Or perhaps ...

All FTSE-100 CEO Pay Too High

ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight was interviewed on Bloomberg this morning (prior to the WPP Annual General Meeting). He suggested all FTSE-100 CEO pay was too high and it was damaging shareholder returns. Click on this link to see the video: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-06-08/all-ftse-100-ceo-pay-too-high-says-weight ShareSoc previously issued this press release on pay at WPP: https://www.sharesoc.org/pr79-wpp-remuneration.html and advised shareholders to vote against the Remuneration Report at the AGM. We have also recently issued our Guidelines for Remuneration in public companies which suggested pay is generally excessive in ...

Alliance Versus RIT Capital

Readers will no doubt be aware from the national media and communications with shareholders that RIT Capital have approached Alliance Trust about a possible merger. The press have noted the problems faced by Alliance in the last few years such as the persistently high discount and the attack by Elliot Advisors (supported by ATSAG/ShareSoc of course) that resulted in board changes. RIT shares have traded at a premium to net asset value recently and media comments tend to generally be positive ...

Rolls-Royce and Voting Procedures

I published a report on the Rolls-Royce Annual General Meeting (AGM) in the last ShareSoc newsletter and also here. I wrote to the Chairman after the meeting complaining about...

Teathers Financial – Requisition to Remove Directors

Investors in Teathers Financial (TEA) have requisitioned an EGM to remove all the current directors and appoint new ones, which was accepted by the company on the 25th May. Teathers was an AIM listed business called C.A.Sperati that turned itself into an investment company and was then renamed (a common route for those giving up on their original business). However under AIM listing rules it needs to make investments within a year of becoming an investment company which it failed to ...

Alliance Trust and RIT Capital

Several newspapers reported this morning that Alliance Trust (ATST) has been approached by RIT Capital Partners (RCP) about a possible merger. Both companies are listed investment trusts favoured by private investors. Alliance Trust has been going through some difficult times of late after a period of poor relative performance resulting in a high discount to net asset value (currently over 10% according to the AIC despite an active share buy-back programme whereas RCP is on a 6% premium at the time ...