Company News

Ignoring the UK Corporate Governance Code

Last week there were Annual General Meetings of the Baronsmead 1 and 2 VCTs (BDV and BVT) and the British Empire Securities and General Trust (BTEM) on the same day. These companies are all investment trusts although the latter is of course somewhat different in nature to the two Venture Capital Trusts. They do have one thing in common though - they both claim to be able to report against the AIC Corporate Governance Code rather than the UK Corporate Governance ...

Law suits – Quindell, Lloyds, RBS and SIPPs

Feel misled by the Quindell board and its advisors? Then there is a new legal action being formulated by Liverpool legal firm "Your Legal Friend". They already claim to have 250 investors interested in pursuing a claim on the basis that statements issued by the board and its advisors show that insufficient care had been taken in relation to the duty of care owed to investors.  At least that's a brief summary of the allegations - see their web site for ...

Two more AIM Exits – Ludorum and Armour Group

Two more departures from AIM were recently announced - Ludorum (LUD) and Armour Group (AMR). Ludorum have been developing a market for their animated children's TV series based on Chuggington trains and associated consumer products. But revenue has never really taken off as investors hoped. Along with the interim results announced on the 15th December (again somewhat disappointing), the company announced a proposed delisting from AIM.  These are the reasons given in the announcement: The factors taken into consideration by the Directors in ...

BP and Shell facing climate change resolutions

Both BP and Shell are likely to face resolutions at their next AGMs which will raise the issue of climate change. A coalition of investment groups including ShareAction and the Local Authority Pension Fund (LAPF) are looking for signatories to a requisition for a resolution to require more reporting by these companies on various aspects of their approach to carbon reduction and emissions management. See http://www.lapfforum.org/news/co-filers-sought-for-2015-shell-and-bp-agm-resolutions for more information. Comment: Some investors feel that the Annual Reports of such companies are already ...

AIM delistings – Security Research and Rethink

Delistings of AIM companies always distress investors. Out of the blue your shares in a company can drop in value very substantially, and you can be left holding an unsaleable stock. Two recent announcements of delistings have been Security Research (SRG) and Rethink (RTG). These are both companies with patchy trading histories and low market capitalisations (£9m and £5m respectively after the announcements). It requires a vote of 75% of shareholders to approve delisting. In the case of Security Research the General ...

ShareSoc Welcomes BG Group Decision but calls on Sir John Hood to Resign

ShareSoc is delighted by today’s news that BG Group has decided to withdraw the conditional share award that was proposed for new CEO Helge Lund. This is a good illustration of active shareholders being able to influence corporate policy and restrain abuses. However, today’s announcement, including acceptance by Mr Lund of the revised terms, clearly demonstrates that the original proposal was excessive and unwarranted. It is obvious that insufficient consultation with shareholders had been conducted before the proposed package was announced, as ...

Bradford & Bingley & Northern Rock Bond Tenders

Bradford & Bingley Plc have announced a new tender offer for the subordinated bonds. These are what were formerly called PIBS which were issued before the company converted to a bank. These bonds remained outstanding when the company was nationalised in 2008 and have continued to be listed and tradable. But the previous tender offers were not considered very generous, although the market price has been slowly recovering on the expectation that the mortgage assets of the company would exceed its ...

Tesco Legal Action – or should we just “put our hands up”?

Law firm Stewarts Law has announced that it is preparing a case against Tesco based on the losses of investors in the company from the overstatement of profits. To quote from their announcement: "The Claim will allege that directors and senior management knew or were reckless as to whether Tesco's statements to the market were untrue or misleading and/or dishonestly concealed the true position, in breach of the Financial Services and Markets Act". They don't intend to await the results of ...

British Empire – moving the goalposts?

Last year ShareSoc published an extensive report on the Annual General Meeting of British Empire Securities and General Trust. This is a long established investment trust which in the long term has achieved good performance figures, but in recent years has not been doing so well. Indeed our report suggested shareholders were becoming restless bearing in mind the comments of some investors at the AGM. For example, in the year to the 30th September 2013, the Trust achieved a total return of ...

Alpha Pyrenees Trust

Two years Alpha Pyrenees Trust Ltd, a property company registered in Guernsey but listed on the London Stock Exchange, appeared to be an attractive investment. It seemed a good opportunity to invest in a European commercial property company that could take advantage of the commercial property sector upturn within Europe. The company has a portfolio of industrial properties mainly in France and with a small percentage being located in Spain. In December 2012 the share price was 16p and the Net Asset ...

Optimal Payments, Quindell and equity loans

A major controversy has arisen over the use by directors of loans from companies such as Equities First Holdings (EFH) which are secured against their equity stakes. The latest company to be affected is Optimal Payments (OPAY) who presented at a recent ShareSoc seminar. The share price fell substantially after comments from a well known blogger, and declined as much as 22% on the 14th November after the comments were widely circulated on bulletin boards. A number of other public company directors ...

Legal Action on Lloyds-TSB and HBOS merger

Attention all former Lloyds-TSB shareholders. As former Lloyds-TSB shareholders are no doubt well aware, the merger of Lloyds-TSB with HBOS in January 2009 to form the Lloyds Banking Group was a disaster for shareholders in Lloyds-TSB. Lloyds-TSB was a financially strong bank who historically had paid a high dividend. HBOS was obviously in financial difficulties at the time and needed bailing out. Indeed information that subsequently became public suggest it was in reality about to go bust because of its large exposure ...