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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 ...

Alliance Trust AGM – Will Dundee cake suffice?

These are some initial impressions of the Alliance Trust AGM in Dundee yesterday - a full report can be found here. It was not quite as exciting as it might have been after the company conceded defeat the previous day and agreed to accept two of the new directors nominated by Elliott, who then withdrew their resolutions. Alliance said it was a "compromise" but most commentators saw it as a tactical withdrawal at best. All Alliance have got is a "non-disparagement" agreement ...

ShareSoc Masterclass in Manchester

After our very successful Masterclass events in London and Peterborough, we have now scheduled a similar event in Altrincham (near Manchester) for the 11th June. Our Masterclasses are designed to offer an entertaining and educational experience for investors. They enable you to learn from proven experts on how to make money in the stock market (or avoid losing it)! Our panel will consist of ISA millionaire Leon Boros, Keith Ashworth-Lord, manager of the ConBrio Sanford DeLand UK Buffettology Fund, Stockopedia CEO Edward Page-Croft and Roger ...

Tesco Results and Elementis AGM

Tesco (TSCO) and Elementis (ELM) - two very different companies. The first announced their preliminary results this morning, and the second held their AGM today which I attended. The opening line of the Tesco announcement says  it all: "It's has been a very difficult year for Tesco". Although it said like-for-like sales volumes were up for the first time in four years, the rest of the commentary was pretty negative and of course there will be no final dividend. Debts are rising, pension ...