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RBS and Pre-Packs

The FT carried a story on Saturday (11/6/2016) which was a blast from the past. It reported that Neil Mitchell, a former CEO of Torex Retail, had filed a claim in the high court against Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Cerberus and KPMG in relation to the sale of the company at the time it went into Administration. This case goes back to 2007 when Torex Retail got into financial difficulties after some fraudulent accounting came to light (which resulted in subsequent ...

WPP Pay and AGM Report

So 33% of investors in WPP voted against Sir Martin Sorrell's pay package of £70 million for last year at yesterday's AGM which made him the highest paid FTSE CEO. That has been reported in the financial media as indicating strong dissatisfaction with the figure, but surely the really astonishing aspect is that obviously 66% voted in favour (and that's ignoring the abstentions). It seems 66% of the mainly institutional voters think that pay at that level is perfectly reasonable! Or perhaps ...

All FTSE-100 CEO Pay Too High

ShareSoc Director Cliff Weight was interviewed on Bloomberg this morning (prior to the WPP Annual General Meeting). He suggested all FTSE-100 CEO pay was too high and it was damaging shareholder returns. Click on this link to see the video: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-06-08/all-ftse-100-ceo-pay-too-high-says-weight ShareSoc previously issued this press release on pay at WPP: https://www.sharesoc.org/pr79-wpp-remuneration.html and advised shareholders to vote against the Remuneration Report at the AGM. We have also recently issued our Guidelines for Remuneration in public companies which suggested pay is generally excessive in ...

ShareSoc Proposes How the AIM Market Should Be Improved

ShareSoc has issued the following press release today: The AIM market run by the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been criticised by many people for the quality of companies listed on the market and for the way it operates. ShareSoc and our Members think that some reform is necessary. There is no denying that it is possible to invest in successful AIM companies but as any experienced AIM investor knows, doing so consistently and avoiding those that either never establish a profitable business, ...

Alliance Versus RIT Capital

Readers will no doubt be aware from the national media and communications with shareholders that RIT Capital have approached Alliance Trust about a possible merger. The press have noted the problems faced by Alliance in the last few years such as the persistently high discount and the attack by Elliot Advisors (supported by ATSAG/ShareSoc of course) that resulted in board changes. RIT shares have traded at a premium to net asset value recently and media comments tend to generally be positive ...