Blog

ShareSoc Blog

This blog gives you the latest topical news plus some informal comments on them from ShareSoc’s directors and other contributors. These are the personal comments of the authors and not necessarily the considered views of ShareSoc. The writers may hold shares in the companies mentioned. You can add your own comments on the blog posts, but note that ShareSoc reserves the right to remove or edit comments where they are inappropriate or defamatory.

There is more news given in the News page of our web site and more analysis of news is provided in our monthly newsletter for members – see the Newsletters page.

If you would like to be notified about new posts to our blog you can opt-in to our Weekly Wrap-Up Email service. If you are a member of ShareSoc select the “Weekly Wrap-Up Email” option here. If you are not a member select the “Information and Education Services” option here.


Law Suit Launched Against Grant Thornton over Patisserie Valerie Audits

The Daily Telegraph and some other sources have reported that the liquidators of Patisserie Valerie (CAKE) have filed a claim in the High Court against Grant Thornton over the audits of Patisserie Valerie in the years before it went into administration. I reported previously that the accounts of Patisserie were a complete fiction – see Reference 1 below – with the assets of the firm overstated by more than £90 million. The liquidators are FRP Advisory and they have appointed lawyers Mischon de ...

ShareSoc Launches Woodford Campaign

A ShareSoc News item written by ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight Update 1, 19 Nov 2020, SHARESOC LAUNCHES WOODFORD CAMPAIGN  Our primary objectives are: to facilitate communication between Woodford investors to help Woodford investors seek compensation for their losses where possibe to ensure that those who contributed to those losses through action or inaction are held to account to bring about changes in the regulations and regulatory enforcement to ensure this type of scandal does not happen again We are pleased that several legal initiatives have ...

Law Commission Review of Intermediated Securities

The Law Commission has published a “scoping paper” on Intermediated Securities (See Reference 1 below). This might sound a pretty dry technical subject but the subtitle of the report asks the important question – it covers “Who Owns Your Shares?” I have written about the problem of the growth in the use of nominee accounts as on-line platforms have replaced share certificates many times in the past. ShareSoc has a web page with voluminous information on this subject including reports written by ...

(Nearly) 20% Vote Against Strategic Equity Capital (SEC) AGM Resolution

19.25% of votes cast were against the continuation of SEC, 13.8% and 12.9% respectively were against the reappointments of SEC Chairman Richard Hills and Richard Locke as director. See https://www.strategicequitycapital.com/sites/default/files/proxy-voting-results-2020_0.pdf The RNS announced but did not mention the actual votes cast. Strategic Equity Capital PLC announces that at the Annual General Meeting held on 11 November 2020 all 14 resolutions proposed were duly passed. Although the ordinary resolution for the continuation of the Company was passed comfortably, the Directors are cognisant of the fact that ...

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 ...

Law Commission Publishes Scoping Paper Re Nominees, etc

The Law Commission have this morning published their scoping paper following their Review of Intermediated Securities. Here are the links Executive Summary (16 pages) Scoping Paper (201 pages) ShareSoc welcome the Law Commission report which clearly highlights the inadequacies of the current system. For far too long the rights of individual shareholders have been ignored. It looks like progress is about to be made. UKSA have commented 'Having looked more closely at both reports, they represent an excellent piece of work by the Law Commission. ...

Epidemic Over? Unable to Trade and Chrysalis VCT Wind-Up

Pandemic News The news that the Pfizer vaccine for Covid-19 appears to work (at least 90% of the time) and has no negative side effects gave stock markets a good dose of euphoria yesterday (9th November). It suggests that we might be able to return to a normal life in future, but exactly when is far from clear. Actually producing and distributing the vaccine is going to be a mammoth task and it is very clear that it will only be given ...

Positive Markets but Platforms Letting Investors Down

Following Pfizer and BioNtech's announcement today that early results from Phase III trials of their Covid-19 vaccine suggested that the vaccine was safe and effective, markets generally have soared. Cyclical and leisure/travel stocks in particular have benefitted whereas certain others have suffered. With this market turbulence it is not surprising that many investors wanted to trade. However, I have seen widespread reports that certain major investment platforms, including Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell/YouInvest have buckled under the strain and are not allowing ...

Is the FRC doing a good job?

By Cliff Weight, Director, ShareSoc. I think the FRC is doing a much better job. The record fine for Deloitte re Autonomy, (see Compliance Week: FRC fines Deloitte record $19.4M for Autonomy audit failures ) and the fines at Redcentric and Redcentric's auditors, and the prosecutions of former Redcentric directors in Southwark Crown Court are further evidence that things are changing. As is the transitioning from FRC into ARGA. But don't take my word for it. Come to the FRC events we have organised ...

Changing auditors’ responsibility for detecting fraud

by Mohammed Amin MBE FRSA MA FCA AMCT CTA (Fellow). This article was first published in UKSA’s Newsletter, The Private Investor, and is reproduced with the author’s permission. The Expectations Gap After almost every major corporate reporting failure, arguments arise about the "expectations gap". This is the gap between what shareholders, creditors, employees and journalists think that auditors should be doing, and what auditors consider they are actually required to do. This expectations gap is particularly acute in cases where there has been fraud. The ...
join ShareSoc