Nominee Accounts

Why Share Certificates are Dangerous and We Need a New System

The national press have covered the story of Deryn and Derek Hemment who face a demand for £25,000 from Capita to replace lost share certificates. They held shares in Compass Group worth £1.5 million and Capita posted them new certificates via second class post. But they never arrived and cannot be traced. Capita says it's not their problem because their terms and conditions make it clear that certificates are sent at the recipients risk. Capita appear to have been acting as ...

ShareSoc Launches Share Ownership Reform Proposals

ShareSoc has just issued the following press release: ShareSoc Launches Share Ownership Reform Proposals ShareSoc has been campaigning for more rights for shareholders and we have now launched specific proposals on how we believe share trading should be reformed. In particular our proposals are aimed at tackling the loss of voting and other rights that currently arises from the use of stockbroker nominee accounts. Our suggestions include: The development of a new low cost electronic trading facility as recommended by the Kay Review, and ...

Charles Stanley loses Finance Director

Charles Stanley announced yesterday (9/1/2014) that its Finance Director James Rawlingson was "leaving with immediate effect".  This follows the appointment of a new CEO in December after the publication of a dire set of half year results at the end of November. Funds under management were static and revenue from the Financial Services Division and platform Charles Stanley Direct were up substantially but higher costs resulted in a loss before tax of £3.9 million. The dividend was maintained at the half ...

A YouTube video on shareholder rights

The latest initiative in the ShareSoc campaign to improve shareholder rights is a video. In it I explain why shareholder democracy is important and how it has been totally undermined by the nominee system now in general use. Instead of you acquiring the rights of an owner of the business when you buy shares, those rights have been diverted and purloined by the nominee operator or stockbroker. This is simply wrong! That is why ShareSoc has been campaigning for change under the ...

Better Finance comments on the EU Shareholder Rights Directive

Better Finance, a representative body for European shareholder associations, has issued a press release commenting on the review of the Shareholder Rights Directive. It points out a number of defects in the proposals. Here are extracts from the press release: "Guillaume Prache, managing director of Better Finance has stressed that many individual shareholders of EU companies will still have to pay high fees to exercise their voting rights across borders within the EU. If the internal market for capital is to carry ...

Progress on the Kay Review

Back in 2011 the Government commissioned Prof. John Kay to review the operation of UK stock markets. There were concerns about "short-termism" by investors, poor corporate governance in companies, excessive executive pay, lack of engagement by investors with companies, high investment charges and excessive intermediation in the investment chain. The resulting report was a very good analysis of the defects in the way the market operated and the recommendations in the report for change were generally accepted by the Government. The Government ...

Why should nominee operators have rights?

Following a meeting at the BIS Department where I discussed the issues associated with Part 9 of the Companies Act, and our suggestion that all shareholders (including those in nominee accounts) be on the share register of companies, I had some further thoughts on this subject. On reflection it seems very odd to me that nominee operators (i.e. your stockbroker) have the rights endowed by the Companies Act on shareholders. Investors in nominee accounts have no such rights (voting rights, information rights, ...

Shareholder rights – the way forward

The Investors Chronicle published a five page article on Friday (7/11/2014) on the campaign for improved shareholder rights under the title "Take Control". The writer Julia Bradshaw gave a good overview of the position of voting and information rights in the UK in comparison with other countries - yes we are way behind most of them - and the activities of representative shareholder associations. The legal risks of holding shares in nominee accounts and why anyone who understands the intricacies of ...

Shareholder Rights campaign launched

Last week ShareSoc launched a campaign to improve shareholder rights with a meeting in London. It focussed on the problems associated with nominee accounts and the adopted legal requirement to replace paper share certificates with an electronic system in a few years time. There was an impressive line-up of speakers at the meeting which included John Kay (author of the Kay Review and FT writer), Michael Kempe from Capita representing the ICSA Registrars Group, Peter Swabey from ICSA, John Lee (Lord Lee ...

Barclays, Tesco and MoPowered

Barclays, Tesco and MoPowered - two big companies and one a typical new AIM company which has yet to show it can make a profit - but all three are under the weather in the last couple of days. Barclays have today (23/9/2014) been fined £38m by the Financial Conduct Authority for failing to ensure that clients money in the investment bank was kept separate from the banks own assets. When I joked in my local Barclays Bank this morning that I ...