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TD Direct Being Sold?

TD Direct, a favourite execution-only stockbroker among private investors, is likely to be sold according to a report by Sky News. There are a number of suggested bidders but one of them is Barclays Bank who run a similar platform under the name Barclays Stockbrokers. With TD Direct having £13 billion of assets under management, a merger of those platforms would still leave the combination somewhat smaller than Hargreaves Lansdown, the market leader. Mergers and restructurings are the name of the game ...

Placings and Open Offers and How to Do Them – St Ives and Tritax

One of the things that annoys private investors is when a company does a placing of shares. This can be for a number of reasons such as the company needing funds for an acquisition, or simply because the company is fast running out of cash and wishes to stave off financial distress. Because of the EU mandated Prospectus Directive, a full Rights Issue where all shareholders can participate in the share issuance and hence avoid dilution of their stake, does require an ...

More Bad News for Banks and their Investors

If there are any private investors still invested in major UK listed banks, last week (w/e 30/1/2016) was yet another for disillusionment. In the Financial Times, Lex hit the nail on the head when he said "The one-offs keep on coming. If one did not know better, one might suspect them of being two-, three-, or more-offs". He was referring to Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), but other banks likewise posted bad news during the week. Let's take them in turn: RBS ...

UK Share Ownership Structure – Not Fit for Purpose

The Editor of Investors Chronicle commented on the recently published BIS Paper on the structure of UK share ownership in this week's edition (see the last article on our blog for more background). He had this to say: "The Department [BIS] finally seems to be coming around to the view that it is, quite simply, not fit for purpose - a view we have held for some time and which I am regularly encouraged by readers to push further. So well ...

BIS Release Paper Showing the Mind-Boggling Complexity of the Intermediated Shareholding Model

The Government BIS Department have released a Research Paper entitled "Exploring the Intermediated Shareholding Model". It shows in 160 odd pages the existing share registration models in the UK and the underlying systems that support shareholder rights (including voting). In essence it demonstrates perfectly the need for reform. It shows that private investors often do not know what rights they have in nominee accounts or indeed that there are alternative ways of holding shares. Even if they are aware they should have ...