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A Dream Become a Nightmare – And a Plug for ShareSoc

There was a good article in the Daily Telegraph on Sunday (17/5/2015) explaining how Thatcher's dream of a share owning population has become a nightmare. She tried to create a nation of investors by privatisations and regulatory changes to improve business competition but instead many companies have ended up being sold to foreign buyers. Even worse there has been a collapse in private share ownership. The reported proportion of UK shares held by individuals has collapsed from 20% in 1994 to 11% ...

Alliance Trust Stocktrade Acquisition and Sexism in the City

Yesterday (15/5/2015), Alliance Trust announced the acquisition of the Stocktrade service from Brewin Dolphin which will be integrated into the Alliance Trust Savings (ATS) subsidiary. The acquisition will cost ATS £14 million, and that cost plus an additional £8m of regulatory capital will be funded by the parent company with an injection of equity. This move will anger many shareholders of Alliance Trust who have expressed concerns about the expansion plans for the Alliance Trust subsidiaries, the capital required and the ...

Shareholder Action Group Launched for Alliance Trust

Following the Annual General Meeting of Alliance Trust (ATST) where the Board conceded the appointment of new directors subsequent to the requisition by Elliott Advisors, ShareSoc has been encouraged by a number of private investors to support a shareholder action group to represent their interests. Many investors still have concerns about the strategy of the company and about some aspects of its operations. A shareholder action group has therefore been launched and investors can register their interest on this web page: https://www.sharesoc.org/alliance.html Roger ...

Who are the Election Winners and Losers?

Who are the General Election winners and losers? Well most investors have benefited because the market as a whole has risen today after the election results gave the Conservatives an unexpected victory. Specific sectors that benefited were house builders and utility companies. House builders were generally up at the time of writing this note, with Berkeley Group in particular up 10% - no doubt investors being relieved there would be no mansion tax affecting expensive properties in London.  Utility companies were ...

Shareholder voting, remuneration and BG Group

Manifest, a proxy advisory service, have reported on the voting at Annual General Meetings recently. It was good to read that there was significant opposition to the change to 14 days notice at the General Meetings of both Arm and Anglo-American - 18% at the latter and even higher at the former. This commonly arises where there are substantial overseas holders who find difficulty in getting in their proxy votes in time because of the complexity of the voting chain. But ...