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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.

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Elecosoft AGM, British Land and Apple

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Elecosoft (ELCO) as a shareholder. Elecosoft produce software products for the building/construction industry. It’s a fairly new purchase of mine so I thought I would go along and get an impression of the company and its management. The meeting was held in the City of London at the convenient time of 12.00 noon and there were about 20 shareholders present. That’s more than I expected given the size of the business (market cap only ...

Beaufort Client Campaign: Update 2

Campaign co-ordinator Nandish Haria and ShareSoc Director Mark Lauber attended last week's meeting for creditors and clients of Beaufort Securities (BSL)and Beaufort Asset Clearing Services (BACSL). The meeting was organised by Administrators PwC and took place on May 10th. Nandish has prepared detailed notes of the meeting, which you can download here: Notes of Initial Beaufort Client_Creditor Meeting 180510 These notes contain important information for clients of Beaufort, which the administrator disclosed at the meeting. As disclosed in our campaign update 1, a key campaign ...

FRC review and the future of audit: break up or shape up?

Sir John Kingman has been appointed to undertake a thorough review of the FRC. ShareSoc and UKSA will be making a submission to this. The FT on 16 May had a front page article on this headed Carillion’s demise spurs call for action against Big Four. MPs’ report on collapse asks for possible break-up of ‘cosy’ auditors by Gill Plimmer. The key points were Outsourcer’s fate exposed 'systemic flaws' in corporate Britain and its ‘toothless’ and 'feeble' regulators, say Commons committees Damning ...

LoopUp, Audioboom, Social Media Abuse and a VCT AGM

LoopUp (LOOP), a small AIM listed company that provides audio conferencing and in which I have a small holding, have announced a proposed acquisition of a company in the same business – MeetingZone Group. This will more than double the size of LoopUp so it constitutes a reverse takeover. As they are paying cash for MeetingZone it will be financed by a term loan and a large placing. The placing will be at 400p per share, when the share price last ...

Beaufort Client Campaign: Update 1

Campaign Status Our campaign was only launched one week ago, but has already generated a terrific response. We now have over 140 campaign members signed up. Unfortunately this has created a backlog of membership requests to process, so please bear with us if you have not yet heard back from us and accept our apologies for any delays. Thank you also for the generous donations to the fighting fund, which will help towards any legal costs that may be incurred defending Beaufort ...

ShareSoc demands fair treatment for Beaufort clients

Press Release 104 - ShareSoc demands fair treatment for Beaufort clients The liquidation of Beaufort Securities on the FCA's instruction is targeting the ring-fenced property of thousands of UK private investors, many of whom are now facing losses of up to 40% of the value of their holdings. The liquidator's proposals bring into question the whole system of regulatory and legal protection of investors in the UK. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) declared Beaufort Securities Limited (BSL) and sister company Beaufort Asset Clearing ...

Shareholder Rights

Probably the most important ShareSoc campaign is the Shareholder Rights campaign, launched in October 2014 to get full rights to ALL shareholders. Individual shareholder rights have been eroded, particularly by the nominee account process and the way that platforms, registrars and brokers fail to provide a good service to individual investors. Often, individual investors do not get informed when a general meeting is going to happen, and do not receive circulars, voting forms and annual reports. And many platforms make it difficult ...

Leon Goes For The Hackney Half

No, this isn’t anything to do with a beer drinking contest or a wrestling move - it's a half marathon round Hackney. Leon Boros, a former ShareSoc director and occasional contributor to the monthly newsletter, is running his first half marathon and has kindly decided to run it to raise funds for ShareSoc. Leon, who has just turned 56, has not been running long and the 13 Miles he needs to cover in the Hackney Half Marathon on May 20th represents a ...

They Do Things Differently in the USA

Former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain has been found guilty of 16 counts of fraud in a Federal Court in California. He was convicted on all 16 counts of wire and securities fraud. This case was based on allegations of false accounting to ramp up the value of the Autonomy business prior to its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard. The latter subsequently wrote down most of the $10.3 billion cost of that acquisition. More background on this case is given in a previous blog post ...

RBS AGM Voting Recommendations, Remuneration and Campaign Update

ShareSoc recommend voting FOR the Shareholder Committee Resolution 27 and AGAINST Resolution 2, the Remuneration Report at the RBS AGM, which will be held on 30 May at 2pm in Edinburgh. After two years of hard work, we are delighted to report that the RBS Board agreed to put our shareholder resolution for a Shareholder Committee on the AGM Agenda. The Shareholders Circular contains our item for discussion and resolution for a Shareholder Committee and the Board's Statement in response on pages ...
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