ShareSoc News

Great news – real company owners to be disclosed

PRESS RELEASE 51 (31/10/2013) The Prime Minister has announced that the details of who really owns and controls UK companies will be made publicly accessible. More information will be announced in early 2014, but the key paragraph in the announcement from the BIS Department includes the statement that the Government will “………potentially use as a model the disclosure regime that currently applies in relation to disclosure of information on company shareholders. This would mean that companies would hold information on the names and ...

Sharesoc response to consultation on Venture Capital Trust share buy-backs

ShareSoc submitted this response to the public consultation on Venture Capital Trust (VCT) buy-backs by HM Treasury: VCT_BuyBacks

Response to Consultation on Transparency & Trust Discussion Paper

ShareSoc has submitted this note in response to the BIS Dept’s Discussion Paper on "Transparency & Trust": TransparencyandTrust

Vodafone and Verizon – how will they use the cash?

PRESS RELEASE 50 (31/08/2013) ShareSoc welcomes the announcement that discussions on the disposal of Vodafone’s stake in Verizon Wireless are being pursued. But our main concern is what the company will do with the cash they might receive (which may be over US$100bn). Vodafone is a company that favours market share buybacks, when most private investors do not. The company has spent £19.5 billion on buybacks in the last ten years (see below) plus £1 billion in the last quarter alone. ShareSoc prefers to ...

City of London Investment Trust Removes Performance Fee

PRESS RELEASE 49 (31/07/2013) ShareSoc welcomes the announcement by City of London Investment Trust that it is to remove the manager’s performance fee. In future it will simply pay a flat fee of 0.365% of assets (or 0.35% when net assets are above £1bn – they are currently 0.7bn). City of London IT is one of the largest generalist investment trusts and also one of the best performing over the long term. Despite beating its benchmark index last year, and over the last ...

Shareholders advised to vote against new performance fee at Northern Venture Trust

PRESS RELEASE 48 (26/06/2013) Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) are one of the stock market oddities but are beloved by many private investors because of the tax reliefs available to investors. Northern Venture Trust was one of the first to be launched back in 1995. It was issued without a fund management performance fee in place but they are now proposing to introduce one. ShareSoc advises shareholders in this company to vote against the resolution to approve the change in the management fee at ...

VSA Capital Group delisting – some most peculiar events

PRESS RELEASE 46 (18/04/2013) On the 28th March, VSA Capital Group announced a proposed delisting from AIM, with a vote to be taken on the 17th April (yesterday). That was of course immediately before the Easter bank holiday, making it somewhat difficult for shareholders, particularly those in nominee accounts, to get their votes in on time. And so it turned out to be. A number of shareholders opposed the delisting, led by Nick Brown who set up a web site to co-ordinate ...

ShareSoc Calls for Revitalised AGMs

PRESS RELEASE 45 (11/04/2013) General meetings are one of the best opportunities for companies to communicate with their owners: the shareholders. But ShareSoc members often find that Annual General Meetings are not the lively and mutually informative occasions that they should be. With the main AGM season looming, ShareSoc has published a document explaining how they should be run. This 12-page note provides guidance on how to get the best out of such meetings, both for shareholders attending and those managing or ...

ShareSoc’s response to HM Treasury’s ISA Shares Consultation

ShareSoc’s response to HM Treasury’s ISA Shares Consultation (covering technical issues on the inclusion of AIM shares in ISAs among other matters) is present here: ISASharesConsultation

ShareSoc’s Response To The Statutory Audit Market Inquiry

Our response to the questions posed by the Competition Commission following their report on the market for Audit Services is contained in this document: Audit-Services

ShareSoc Recommends Voting Against Chairman Dick Olver, at the BAE Systems AGM

PRESS RELEASE 44 (31/03/2013) ShareSoc recommends shareholders vote against the re-election of Chairman Dick Olver at the BAE Systems AGM on the 8th May, and against the Remuneration Report and some of the other resolutions. See this note which we have sent to supporters of the ShareSoc campaign on BAE for more information: www.sharesoc.org/BAE_Newsletter_5.pdf ShareSoc has been campaigning for the removal of Mr Olver since the aborted merger with EADS. More information on our campaign is here: www.sharesoc.org/campaigns4.html For further information, please ...

ShareSoc celebrates second anniversary

PRESS RELEASE 43 (01/03/2013) In February 2010 the UK Individual Shareholders Society (ShareSoc) was launched as an organisation to represent private investors. Since then the Society has recruited over 2,500 members and has actively worked to promote their interests. ShareSoc has run a number of campaigns on companies where we identified significant issues of concern to shareholders including Rensburg AIM VCT, Graphite Enterprise, Intercede Group, Lighthouse Group and BAE Systems, and achieved significant share price performance improvement in the first two. Intercede ...