ShareSoc News

ShareSoc’s Response to the Response to Consultation on Fiduciary Duties of Intermediaries

The Law Commission have undertaken a public consultation on the "Fiduciary Duties of Investment Intermediaries". ShareSoc’s response is in this document: Fiduciary_Duties

Hargreaves Lansdown doubles charges for some investors

PRESS RELEASE 53 (17/01/2014) On the 15th January Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) announced new charges on its investment platform. The changes are no doubt provoked by the new rules whereby funds can no longer pass part of their charges back to HL. But the changes will mean that the annual charges paid by some investors will double. The reason why charges might double is that in future investment trust holdings will not be treated as being direct share investments, even though they are the ...

Hargreaves Lansdown backs down on investment trust charges

PRESS RELEASE 53 (17/01/2014) Hargreaves Lansdown doubles charges for some investors On the 15th January Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) announced new charges on its investment platform. The changes are no doubt provoked by the new rules whereby funds can no longer pass part of their charges back to HL. But the changes will mean that the annual charges paid by some investors will double. The reason why charges might double is that in future investment trust holdings will not be treated as being direct share ...

Collective Engagement – A New “City Club” for Institutions?

PRESS RELEASE 52 (20/12/2013) ShareSoc welcomed many of the proposals contained in the Kay Review, including the third key recommendation that "An investors’ forum should be established to facilitate collective engagement by investors in UK companies". Subsequently a Collective Engagement Working Group was formed to take this proposal forward and it has recently produced a report (see Note below). Unfortunately this report contains a number of major defects in our view and we will be making representations to the Government opposing the structure ...

ShareSoc’s Response to the FCA’s Consultation on Crowdfunding

Proposals to regulate Crowdfunding were the subject of this response to an FCA consultation: Crowdfunding

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 ...