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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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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 ...

Beaufort Administration, Intercede and the Mello Conference

Yesterday I attended the first day of the 2-day Mello investor conference in Derby. There were lots of good presentations and some interesting companies to talk to. One hot topic of conversation was the collapse of Beaufort which was forced into administration (see two previous blog posts on the topic for details). There are apparently many people affected by it. There are a number of major issues that have arisen here: The administrators (PWC) have suggested it might cost as much as ...

Persimmon 2018 AGM Voting Recommendations

We (Peter Parry of UKSA and I) met the interim Chairman Nigel Mills and the Rem Com Chair Marion Sears on 19 April. This was part of the Persimmon charm offensive to try and minimise the negative impact of the  2012 LTIP which is due to pay out massively. Nigel and Marion were not responsible for the 2012 LTIP. That was done before they joined Persimmon. Those responsible have resigned and Nigel and Marion are trying to make the best of an ...

The Departure of Sir Martin Sorrell

At last the highest paid and longest serving FTSE-100 CEO has departed from WPP after 33 years. His total pay last year was £48 million, down from the previous year’s “single figure” of £70 million. Sir Martin was certainly perceived to be a “star” businessman, and the financial performance of WPP pleased shareholders for many years. Despite recent problems the Annual Report of the company claims a Total Shareholder Return of 1,006% over the last twenty years as against a measly ...

It is this weekend – ShareSoc will be at the UK’s biggest shares show UK Investor on April 21 – will you? Free tickets on offer

This Saturday 21st April ShareSoc will be mixing with more than 3,000 serious investors at the UK Investor Show. And we have some of the last available tickets to hand out today, for free, to ShareSoc members Sharesoc will be organising one of 133 stands at the country's largest one day event for those interested in shares. The other stands will be manned by AIM and Standard List companies and the CEOs of most of them will also be doing 20 minute ...
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