Blogs

Latest Blogs

Chancellor’s Budget and How It Affects You

What follows is a summary of Chancellor Philip Hammond’s Budget speech today, and the impact of the tax changes. Private investors were particularly concerned about the impact of tax reliefs in the VCT/EIS schemes following the Patient Capital Review but these are in fact relatively minor (see end of document). This is a summary of the key points he announced: The Chancellor said we are on the brink of a technological revolution, we must embrace it. Britain is at the forefront, but ...

Standard Life UK Smaller Companies and FRC Meetings

Yesterday I attended two meetings in the City of London. Here are brief reports on each. Standard Life UK Smaller Companies Trust Plc (SLS) held a meeting for investors to “meet the manager” in London as their AGM was in Edinburgh this year – only about 10 people attended the latter so there were more in London. I have held this trust for some years and the manager, Harry Nimmo, who has been with the company for 33 years has been a ...

VCTs and the Budget

It looks like VCTs have escaped, but there is some tightening of the qualifications. We will need to read this in detail to see the outcome. There has however...

The belly of the beast – Con Keating and the Investment Association

I am not a great fan of the Investment Association, the trade body that represents UK investment managers. Its 200 members collectively manage over £6.9 trillion on behalf of clients in the UK and around the world. Regular readers will recall my pleasure when Chris Sier was appointed to improve the disclosure of fund manager fees, https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/an-audience-with-chris-sier-the-fcas-new-pit-bull-on-fund-fees-20170804 and my displeasure when the Investment Association were asked by HM Government to maintain the naughty register of companies with more than 20% of their ...

Halma (HLMA) and Return on Capital

Recently, I talked about Diploma (DPLM) and their calculation of adjusted return on capital. This morning Halma (HLMA) published their half year results and they also have a strong emphasis on return on capital, but in this case they call it “ROTIC” (Return On Total Invested Capital). This was down slightly at 13.4% and they define it as Adjusted Profit After Tax divided by Total Invested Capital. The latter is shareholders funds, plus retirement benefit obligations, less deferred tax assets, plus ...