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Undisclosed Fees and AGMs

It's interesting what you can learn at Annual General Meetings, or from ShareSoc reports on them, even if you don't attend in person. One of the recent news items in the financial press was about the disclosure of what private equity fund managers have received in "carried interest". It transpired that two very large US pension funds, Calpers and Calstrs, had no idea how much their fund managers had earned in this way over many years on top of their normal fees. ...

Goodwin still on the hook for RBS debacle

The Herald newspaper have reported an astonishing attempt by the lawyers for Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to have Fred Goodwin excluded from the legal case over the rights issue in 2008. They wanted four former directors removed from the case so as to streamline proceedings. However the judge presiding over the case threw this attempt out. The directors signed off the prospectus and hence should surely be accountable for what the plaintiffs claim was a misleading document. But the lawyer for ...

Does Rolls-Royce need shaking up?

Does Rolls-Royce (RR.) need shaking up? Or more to the point perhaps, will they be following the disclosure that activist fund manager ValueAct has taken a 5% stake in the company, although their agenda is as yet unclear. On the 30th July Rolls-Royce issued their half-year results. Results were disappointing as expected. The order book was up, but underlying revenue was down and underlying profit before tax down by 32%. This is basically the same story as was evident at the full ...

Markets in Freefall, Chinese shares and VCT Issues

While the world seems to be collapsing around us - with sharp falls in the price of most commodities including the critical ones of oil and gold - this writer took the time to attend the Annual General Meeting of Downing ONE VCT this morning. Forget also the fact that the Chinese stock market plummeted yesterday. The more I read about the dynamics of that market the more it looks similar to the US market in the 1920s where manipulation was ...

FT Acquisition, Toshiba, Diageo, Healthcare Locums, False Accounting, Chinese Companies, and AIM

The Financial Times is being sold by Pearson to Japanese media group Nikkei Group. The Chairman of Nikkei was quoted as saying it will be "business as usual" (in the FT of course) and that the "philosophy and values of the FT are the same as ours". Clearly they are still in the honeymoon period but let us hope that is true as the FT provides excellent factual news and commentary in general. Here's just some of the news they have ...