Shareholder Democracy

How to Hold Shares – Investors Chronicle Article

Friday (11/3/2016) saw the publication of a sound article by Investors Chronicle under the headline "Choose the right way to hold your shares". It reported on the recently published BIS research paper on shareholding in the UK upon which we have previously commented. It quotes me extensively on the subject including these comments: "The UK Individual Shareholders Society (ShareSoc) said the report showed "the need for reform". Roger Lawson, deputy chairman of ShareSoc, says brokers have an incentive to keep investors ignorant ...

BIS Release Paper Showing the Mind-Boggling Complexity of the Intermediated Shareholding Model

The Government BIS Department have released a Research Paper entitled "Exploring the Intermediated Shareholding Model". It shows in 160 odd pages the existing share registration models in the UK and the underlying systems that support shareholder rights (including voting). In essence it demonstrates perfectly the need for reform. It shows that private investors often do not know what rights they have in nominee accounts or indeed that there are alternative ways of holding shares. Even if they are aware they should have ...

Glencore Placing Attacked

In a previous blog post I said that Glencore's plans to cut its debt and strengthen its balance sheet by disposals and a new share issue were "just what the doctor ordered". But it turns out that the detail of the prescription was not to everyone's liking. Institutional fund managers have rightly deplored the fact that the equity issue was a "placing", i.e. not a rights issue that is subject to the normal pre-emption rules. In other words, existing shareholders were ...

Defeating Shareholder Democracy at Alliance Trust et al

The existing shareholding arrangements in public companies, with many investors in nominee accounts, now effectively frustrate shareholder democracy. Alternatively they make it either very difficult in practice, or enormously expensive. Let's look at a couple of examples where ShareSoc has some recent experience of requesting share registers - Alliance Trust and Rensburg AIM VCT. In terms of the size of the company and numbers of shareholders Alliance Trust is one of the larger public companies. It has recently come under attack from ...

Rensburg AIM VCT About Face on Wind-Up

Rensburg AIM VCT Plc have today (18/6/2015) announced that the circular giving details of the previously proposed wind-up of the company has been put on hold. They state that the previous announcements have "......acted as a catalyst to generate interest in the Company and several of the parties with whom the Board had held previous discussions have approached the Board with proposals which might prove to be more attractive than before". Maven Capital Partners, who had written to shareholders, is not ...

Shareholder voting, remuneration and BG Group

Manifest, a proxy advisory service, have reported on the voting at Annual General Meetings recently. It was good to read that there was significant opposition to the change to 14 days notice at the General Meetings of both Arm and Anglo-American - 18% at the latter and even higher at the former. This commonly arises where there are substantial overseas holders who find difficulty in getting in their proxy votes in time because of the complexity of the voting chain. But ...

Alliance Trust AGM – Will Dundee cake suffice?

These are some initial impressions of the Alliance Trust AGM in Dundee yesterday - a full report can be found here. It was not quite as exciting as it might have been after the company conceded defeat the previous day and agreed to accept two of the new directors nominated by Elliott, who then withdrew their resolutions. Alliance said it was a "compromise" but most commentators saw it as a tactical withdrawal at best. All Alliance have got is a "non-disparagement" agreement ...

THE EUROVOTE PROJECT – Help requested

Help needed please !!! The Eurovote Project allows investors in other countries to have their shares voted at British AGMS. One of our shareholders takes authorisation supplied by us to the allotted AGM. Recent illness has prevented this from happening in six of our eighteen allocations. We are asking if anyone with shares in the companies below would be prepared to help us to do this. There is no significant effort involved if you are going to the AGM anyway, and a ...

Active Management and Collective Action

An article in yesterday's FT (16/3/2015) on active investment management, versus passive, by Sophia Grene prompted some thoughts on the topic of "public goods". Passive management is where a manager is simply tracking an index whereas active managers are actually making their own investment decisions. Active management typically costs more to the investor, on the premise that more work is required to be put in by the manager, but they argue that it is justified because they can outperform the market. ...

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 ...

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 ...