Meetings for Investors

How and Why I’m Voting at Nationwide’s Upcoming AGM

This article reflects the opinions of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. A personal view from ShareSoc Director, Mark Bentley Nationwide has chosen to hold its AGM online only, this year on 15th July. I believe that this will be a controversial AGM, so it is disappointing that the directors have chosen not to face Nationwide’s members in person. The chief source of controversy, in my opinion, was the board’s decision to acquire Virgin Money, without consulting its members. Now, I ...

M&S Shareholder Rights Petition: A Postmortem

This article reflects the opinions of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. With 4,292 signatures, the M&S petition failed to meet the threshold The M&S Shareholder Rights Petition, led by Archie Norman and supported by ShareSoc, UKSA, The QCA and Equiniti, has closed after failing to meet the threshold of 10,000 signatures for a government review and 100,000 signatures for a parliamentary debate. The petition aimed to help more investors engage with UK plcs by modernising the Companies Act, specifically: Giving beneficial ...

BP Shareholder Meeting 19 April 2023 – Report

This article reflects the opinions of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. I attended the BP shareholder meeting on 19 April, held at the BP Head Office 1 St James’s Square, along with about 60 - 70 other shareholders. The meeting was organised by UKSA and ShareSoc members were also invited to attend.   The case for investing in BP shares is clear. They plan to grow ROACE to 18% with careful and limited capex split 50/50 between transition (green) energy ...

Webinars Galore – Intercede + AB Dynamics + Augmentum

The views expressed in this article are those of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. I seem to be filling my days with webinars of late. Two today and one yesterday, partly because this is the season for half-year results announcements. I’ll cover the recent ones – all on the Investor Meet Company platform, but I’ll only give you some general impressions and highlight particular points as you can watch recordings of them for the detail: Intercede (IGP). Positive results and the ...

Woodford – What Happens Next? 30 September 2021 – 5pm-6:30pm

Woodford Investors are flocking to ShareSoc’s What Happens Next event (30/09/21 at 5pm), headlined by Jeff Prestridge, Personal Finance editor of the Mail on Sunday. Tell your friends and family if they invested in a Woodford fund that they need to join them.       It’s time to update Woodford investors and ShareSoc Campaign members on progress to date. As well as update you on the prospects of you claiming back some of the losses and the potential timeline of when you might get ...

Daily Mail, 2 May 2021, Aviva Investor Revolt

The Daily Mail quoted ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight in its 2 May Aviva article https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9535371/Aviva-faces-investor-revolt-preference-shares-scandal.html   Aviva faces an investor revolt this week after angering shareholders by deciding not to claw back fees from directors who oversaw a preference shares scandal. The insurer was rocked in 2018 when it said it was considering buying back shares marketed as 'irredeemable' for less than they were trading at. It reneged on the announcement days later, by which time the shares had tumbled. It was forced to compensate investors. ...

Accessing Virtual Shareholder Meetings

It is an unfortunate feature of Covid regulations that many companies have used the waivers contained in those regs to avoid meeting with their shareholders at AGMs. It is therefore gratifying to see that some companies are at least making some effort to provide a virtual forum to meet investors. Two companies that I follow which have offered such forums are the RIT Capital Partners investment trust (RCP) and AstraZeneca (AZN). Unfortunately, however, there is a snag. RCP say: You will be able to ...

Update #13
ShareSoc Sirius Shareholders’ Group (SSSG)
SiriusClaim (www.SiriusClaim.com)
15th December 2020

On 8th of December we (ShareSoc and Sirius Claim Group) held a webinar to provide a progress update. The event was very well attended. There were 258 registrants and over 200 attended on the night. Links to the video of the webinar are here and copies of the slides here for those who were unable to attend. There were a good number of questions and answers at the end. If we were unable to answer your question during the event we will ...

Report: Volex Webinar

I listened in to a Volex webinar on 11th November which was very well attended and presented. I have been a shareholder in Volex for some while and they have done very well achieving their targets of raising their gross margins by improving their product mix, dropping much of their lower margin cables business. Margins have been increased to 10.3% and they are doing well with their electric vehicle cables as the growth in this market continues. Volex have manufacturing operations in China, ...

Chrysalis – Vote NO at 26 November General Meeting

Shareholders are excluded from this GM and there is no pre-meeting webinar to discuss these highly contentious proposals to wind up the VCT and distribute any monies raised (less administration fees, including payments to the failing fund manager and some directors). Several members of the ShareSoc VCT Investor Group (including Tim Grattan, Mark Lauber, Roger Lawson and myself) met on 10 Nov to discuss Chrysalis' plans. Our conclusion was that shareholders should vote against these proposals for the following reasons: Chrysalis is ...

Recording of ShareSoc’s Webinar with Ergomed

This is the recording of ShareSoc’s Webinar with Ergomed, which took place on 6th October 2020.

Festival of Property Funds from QuotedData

For those of you who are interested in property funds, I came across this interesting looking series of webinars hosted by QuotedData and taking place over the next 3 weeks - https://quoteddata.com/events/quoteddatas-property-webinar-series-2/ It covers a good range of property funds, trusts and REITs and might be worth a look.  Mike Dennis