Company News

John Lee, WPP and Optimal Payments

As usual there was a thought provoking article by John Lee in the FT Money edition on Saturday (4/4/2015). He discusses the "one that got away" in his past investment history, which was a small company called Wire and Plastic Products. He invested £9,000 in 1984 in this manufacturer of supermarket trolleys but sold his shares for £25,000 when an unknown person named Martin Sorrell bought a large stake and the shares rocketed. It went on to become WPP (market cap ...

An Analysis of the Alliance Trust Defence

ShareSoc has now issued a fuller analysis of the case for change at Alliance Trust, and the defence notes issues by Alliance Trust. It is present in this document on our web site: https://www.sharesoc.org/ShareSoc_Alliance_Trust_Analysis.pdf This is what is said in the conclusion of that document:  We think it was perfectly reasonable for Elliott Advisors to take up their worries with Alliance and propose directors if they considered the issues they have raised were not being dealt with. Requisitioning resolutions is simple democracy upon ...

Alliance Trust – ShareSoc Press Release

ShareSoc has issued the following press release after talking to both representatives of Alliance Trust and Elliott Advisors. If you have any views on this matter please let us know, and we would particularly like to hear from any holders of Alliance Trust shares (for publication or privately if you prefer). This is one company where private shareholders are in the majority but it will be interesting to see how many can and do vote. It may prove an interesting example of how ...

Alliance Trust Under Attack

Alliance Trust, an investment trust held by many private investors, is coming under attack for poor performance and poor corporate governance for a second time. It defeated a campaign by Laxey Partners back in 2011, and although their AGM resolutions were defeated the company did subsequently make some changes - for example more share buy-backs were done to help control the share price discount. This time it is the turn of Elliott Advisors who control over 12% of the shares. They ...

50 Years at Berkshire Hathaway – Warren Buffett’s Annual Report

Warren Buffett is widely viewed as the most successful investor in modern times, primarily because of his consistent record in outperforming market indices. His Berkshire Hathaway investment vehicle is the largest conglomerate in the world as he holds not just stakes in publicly quoted companies but a wide range of wholly owned operating companies. He has recently published the latest edition of his annual letter to investors and as usual there are some pithy comments in there from which everyone can ...

Olympus – A $1.7 Billion Dollar Fraud

One of the best television programmes on business matters was surely the recently broadcast documentary on the fraud at Olympus (BBC TV 4 Storyville under the title "A $1.7 Billion Dollar Fraud" - available on I-Player for the next few weeks). This was the story of Englishman Michael Woodford who was made President of Japanese public company Olympus Corporation, a large manufacturer of optical equipment (revenue $10 billion and 40,000 employees).  Although he had worked for the company for many years, he ...

Fundsmith Equity Fund Investors Meeting

Last night (3/3/2015) Fundsmith held its Annual Meeting for investors in London. It was a full house at the venue - about 300 people I would estimate. Terry Smith the fund manager did most of the talking and he is of course a good speaker. The format was very much like Warren Buffett's meetings for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders with questions having to be submitted in advance, and some clearly being rhetorical ones asked by the faithful as many investors will have ...

Moneysupermarket.com Results and Parliamentary Criticism

It was interesting to listen to the Preliminary Results on-line conference call of Moneysupermarket.com this morning.  The results were positive and better than analysts' forecasts but the interesting bit came in the question/answer session. Top marks though to the company for making the call freely available. Revenue of the company rose 10% and adjusted earnings per share were up 14%. The dividend was also raised by 10%. The company also noted that trading was strong in the first two months of this ...

Rensburg AIM VCT to Wind Up

Four years ago ShareSoc ran a campaign to shake up the Rensburg AIM VCT which historically had given a dire investment performance and had very high management fees. These things were changed but it still has the same Chairman, Richard Battersby, and other directors. We did question at the time what the future of the company might be because the company tended to return any cash from investment realisations to shareholders thus effectively gradually winding down the size of the company. The ...

Affected by the Oil/Gas Price slump? Weir, Petrofac and IDOX

I don't think any investor will be unaware that the price of oil has fallen off a cliff in the last few weeks. It was good to hear at the IDOX AGM this morning (26/2/2015) that the impact on their business was relatively minor - they supply engineering management information software plus public sector software and the former does have about 11% of sales in the oil/gas sector. The share price barely moved after a positive announcement in the morning that ...

DFS Furniture IPO – Should you invest?

DFS Furniture have announced an IPO which will be available to retail investors - as long as you are happy to "take" the price the institutions are willing to pay. Anyone considering investing in the shares might like to note the comments below, but you are of course advised to read the full prospectus and/or take professional advice on the matter if necessary. This writer is well qualified to write on this subject because I used to hold DFS shares the last ...

Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies Trust AGM Report Summary

I attended the AGM of the Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies Trust (SST) yesterday (19/2/2015). This is an investment trust that is focussed on China, South-East Asia and India - yes there is not much Scottish about it apart from the fact that it is registered in Edinburgh and managed by First State Investment Management who are headquartered there (but whose parent is actually the Commonwealth Bank of Australia). Normally they hold their AGMs in Edinburgh but this year it was in First ...