Company News

Blinkx rebuttal of blog allegations

Blinkx has today published an extended rebuttal of the allegations against the company made in a blog a few weeks ago. Those allegations called into question the ethics and business practices of the company and resulted in a major fall in the share price. As the blog author had been commissioned by investors, it has been suggested that this was a typical shorting attack, and might be market abuse (we understand more than one person has complained to the FCA on ...

SSE, Centrica and Energy Market Probe

The prices of shares in energy supply companies such as SSE and Centrica fell sharply last year after Labour threats to impose a price freeze for retail customers. For example SSE was as high as 1675p in May 2013, but fell back to below 1350p by November. It's 1508p at the time of writing and has shown a steady recovery in the last new months. That recovery arose because both the Government and the companies took steps to minimise future price ...

Shareholder Activism wins at Leaf Clean Energy

Leaf Clean Energy (LEAF) is an investment trust that specialises in "renewable energy and sustainable technology". It raised $386 million in 2007 but subsequently bought back some of its shares giving an effective net figure of $307m. At June 2013, net assets were reported as $183m, i.e. substantial losses have been made, and the latest interim figures announced yesterday (26/3/2014) reported another $1.8m of losses. A more extensive analysis of the issues at the company was given in the last ShareSoc ...

ShareSoc launches Group for concerned shareholders in the Oxford Technology VCTs

The Oxford Technology VCT (OXT) and Oxford Technology 3 VCT (OTT) have announced that HMRC has withdrawn their VCT status. This has been done because one of the Venture Capital Trust rules is that no more than 15% of a fund can be invested in one company. Both these companies have a holding in Scancell, an AIM listed company, and the share price of Scancell rose rapidly so that the rule was inadvertently breached as a result of a small funding ...

Oxford Technology VCTs lose VCT status

The Oxford Technology VCT (OXT) and  Oxford Technology 3 VCT (OTT) have announced that HMRC has withdrawn their VCT status. This has been done because one of the Venture Capital Trust rules is that no more than 15% of a fund can be invested in one company. Both these companies have a holding in Scancell, an AIM listed company, and the share price of Scancell rose rapidly so that the rule was inadvertently breached in October 2013 which the company reported ...

Remuneration Policies and Baronsmead VCT 3

The new Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act requires public companies to take a vote on Remuneration Policy, i.e. a forwarded looking binding vote for the next three years, as opposed to the non-binding retrospective one on the Remuneration Report with which we are all familiar. The latter will still be present, and investors might worry that the former will be a long-winded and tedious document that they will need to plough through (rather like the multi-page Remuneration Reports from large companies). There have ...

Analysts forecasts and Persimmon

Why are stock market analysts forecasts so varied? Or to put it another way, why are they so useless as a reliable predictor of the future? This question came to mind when looking at their recommendations after Persimmon issued their final results on the 25th February. Persimmon is of course a house building company. So it's operating in a well established sector where business trends are well researched and well known. Indeed house prices are dinner table conversations and the level of ...

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust reduces fees

The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has announced that the management fees paid to Baillie Gifford are to be reduced. They are coming down from  0.32% to 0.30% of net assets per annum. This reduction is surely to be welcomed, and there is no performance fee at this trust. The Chairman of the company, John Scott,  said: "Both the Board and Managers are keenly aware that low charges have a major impact on long term returns especially when compounding is taken into account.  ...

Stop losses and shorting – Techinvest caught out with Blinkx

Stop losses are a way that many investors use to limit the downside risk on stock market investments. They help to counter the "loss aversion" psychological trait that encourages you to continue holding a stock because you have fallen in love with it whereas everyone else is seeing it differently, or may have some information that you do not. But as that well respected publication Techinvest has just found out, there is a significant problem when there is an active shorting campaign ...

Royal Bank of Scotland – more losses and downsizing

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced yet another set of disappointing results yesterday (27/2/2014). The share price closed down 8% on the day and is now way below what the Government paid for its majority stake in the business. New chief executive Ross McEwan announced the results after the previous one, Stephen Hester, had departed to sort out another basket case - RSA (formerly Royal and  Sun Alliance). It was certainly an opportune moment to move on. Last year RBS managed to ...