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Obituary – Steve Marshall

The Daily Telegraph ran a lengthy obituary on Steve Marshall today, who died recently at the young age of 60. It covered his financial career in a not particularly complimentary way although some might say he took on a lot of difficult positions. He first came to public prominence when he became CEO of Railtrack after Gerald Corbett was forced to resign, despite having minimal experience of the railway industry. Railtrack was part of the former British Rail that had been privatised ...

Accrol and Pricing Power

I won’t be the first to comment on the events at Accrol (Kate Burgess covered it well for example in yesterday's FT), but the suspension of the shares from AIM on the 8th October caught a lot of investors by surprise. The latest announcement this morning said: “The Directors believe that the current challenges facing the Company relate largely to FY18 and are likely to have less of an impact on the Company's trading performance in FY19. The Board are therefore ...

Abcam, Voting and Non-Executives

I am a long-standing holder of Abcam (ABC) and have been very happy with my investment – a compound annual return of 33% p.a. since I first purchased the shares in 2006 according to ShareScope. But the notice of this year’s AGM (to be held in Cambridge as normal) has made me unhappy for other reasons. Firstly, I tried to vote. Rather than use the paper proxy voting form (I am on the register so I get one) I thought it would ...

A 6% Yield & Money Back in 2023, What’s Not to Like?

The answer to the question, in short, is "plenty" IMO. In this era of low interest rates, an investment offering a "guaranteed" 6% yield and return of capital after 6 years may seem appealing, superficially. Investors, however, need to dig a little deeper and examine the strength of that guarantee. This particular investment, being issued on behalf of Select Property Group, came to my attention as it is being offered by one of my brokers, YouInvest (and several other "intermediaries", including Saga Share ...

Performance Related Pay – Does it work? It Depends

Evidence from Compass-Capita-Comparison shows performance related pay can work - when measured over the long term. Since 2009, Compass has paid Richard Cousins, its CEO, £43m and Capita paid CEO Andy Parker £15m. According to my rough sums (which ignore the impact of the numbers of shares in issue and dividends and capital distributions), Compass added value of £19bn and Capita lost £1.2bn. They started at similar size £6bn and £5bn respectively. The FT story Richard Cousins steps down as Compass chief executive ...