General News

FT One-Sided on Brexit?

Do you read the Financial Times? If so have you found the repeated articles on Brexit (including many editorials) somewhat one-sided? Well yesterday the Financial Times actually published a letter from Campbell Gordon complaining about it, and it's not often that editors publish letters critical of what they are issuing. But what do we get today? Yet another editorial on the same topic and with the same slant - in this case explaining why scientists are unhappy with Brexit and should not ...

Financial Repression Destroys Savings

The following press release has been issued by Better Finance to its members (of which ShareSoc is one). Readers may wish to take up this matter with their Member of Parliament as the UK has certainly been following the same economic strategy as the rest of Europe as regards to interest rates and financial repression so was to relieve the Government of some of its debt. PRESS RELEASE - FINANCIAL REPRESSION DESTROYS SAVINGS: EUROPEAN SAVERS BAILED IN BY ECB 22 April 2016 - ...

What’s the Beef About the Cameron’s Tax Planning, and Tata?

The attacks on David Cameron over his family's tax planning seem wildly excessive. His father set up an offshore investment fund to invest in dollar based shares without incurring the risk of double taxation. David did hold some of the units but subsequently sold them. His mother gave him £200,000 after his father died, with the probability (not certain) of that being outside inheritance tax if she lived for another 7 years. That is not exceptional tax planning, it's just common ...

Spreading Rumours About Stocks Is a Criminal Offence

As a follow up to my last blog post on the case of Iraj Parvizi currently being heard in Southwark Crown Court, it has now transpired that he was not aware that spreading false rumours was a criminal offence. As Mark Bentley has commented on the last article, Mr Parvizi's comments on trading in Pacific Media appear to be an example of using “manipulating devices” [MAR 1.7.2] under the FCA Handbook regulations, which explicitly identifies “pump and dump” as a form of ...

Spreading Rumours About Stocks

The Financial Times reported today on the curious case of Iraj Pavazi, a stock market trader currently on trial at Southwark Crown Court. In his defence testimony he apparently admitted that he once spread false rumours about a stock to push up the share price. The article reports that he bought all the shares in the stock of Pacific Media (a "penny" share listed on AIM) that were available and then spread a story that a Malaysian tycoon was going to reverse ...

Prime Minister Resigns

PM resigns over disclosures from Panamian lawyers. Ah but that's not our David Cameron, but Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson after previously denying in a televised interview that his family had any offshore investments. David Cameron spelled it out. He holds "no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that" he said in a statement. My immediate reaction was "what a pity". The failure of politicians to hold shares in listed companies means that they end up with no understanding ...

FAMR and Advice Services

Just before the Budget was announced, the Final Report of the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR) was published. That Review was the latest examination of the financial advice market. To put it in some historic perspective, the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) was introduced to improve the quality of financial advice provided and remove obvious bias. So financial advisors had to stop bundling, and effectively hiding, the cost of advice when selling financial products but had to declare it. This certainly improved the ...

Budget Spring 2016 – You Won’t Need Sugar to Sweeten this Pill

The Chancellor appeared to be in a buoyant mood delivering his budget speech today even though he noted that the global economy is weak and financial markets are turbulent. He reported a fast growing UK economy and lots of personal tax cuts. Indeed he emphasised that with 1% of the richest taxpayers contributing 28% of all income tax, this was proof "that we are all in this together" in case you did not realise it! But the wealthy certainly won't be ...

The Financial Times, religion and Brexit

Has the FT developed an interest in religious affairs? On Friday (11/3/2016), they reported on two matters. First was the revelation that to become a saint, you need strong financial backing. Apparently the Pope is cracking down on financial abuses in the sainthood business. It can cost as much as £750,000 to get a person promoted to sainthood and paying more speeds up the process. Second was their reporting of Archbishop Justin Welby's views on Brexit as published in the parliamentary magazine ...

CMA, Ofgem and Data Protection Rules

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have been tackling the lack of competition in the market for household utility supplies for some time. They are concerned that many customers have not switched suppliers for some years. Stuck on a basic tariff, they may be paying several hundred pounds a year over the market rates available by shopping around (for example by using price comparison web sites). They were proposing a price cap for such tariffs, which would of course not be a ...

London Stock Exchange – Deutsche Börse Merger, and Brexit

More details were announced this morning of the proposed merger between the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Deutsche Börse. Is this really a "merger of equals", as it is being promoted, because such things are very rare in practice? Deutsche Börse has a larger market capitalisation and their shareholders will end up with 54.4% of the combined group. We now learn the group will be domiciled in London but will have headquarters in both London and Frankfurt with listings on both the ...

The Non-Financial Reporting Directive

While the debate over the EU and its bureaucracy is so topical, it's worth taking a look at the latest public consultation on an EU Directive that needs to be implemented into UK law. This goes under the snappy title of "The Non-Financial Reporting Directive". It's primarily about how companies report information to their investors and to the wider public on their strategy and operations - typically in their Annual Reports at present. There is already a requirement in UK company law to ...