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British Empire – moving the goalposts?

Last year ShareSoc published an extensive report on the Annual General Meeting of British Empire Securities and General Trust. This is a long established investment trust which in the long term has achieved good performance figures, but in recent years has not been doing so well. Indeed our report suggested shareholders were becoming restless bearing in mind the comments of some investors at the AGM. For example, in the year to the 30th September 2013, the Trust achieved a total return of ...

Alpha Pyrenees Trust

Two years Alpha Pyrenees Trust Ltd, a property company registered in Guernsey but listed on the London Stock Exchange, appeared to be an attractive investment. It seemed a good opportunity to invest in a European commercial property company that could take advantage of the commercial property sector upturn within Europe. The company has a portfolio of industrial properties mainly in France and with a small percentage being located in Spain. In December 2012 the share price was 16p and the Net Asset ...

Optimal Payments, Quindell and equity loans

A major controversy has arisen over the use by directors of loans from companies such as Equities First Holdings (EFH) which are secured against their equity stakes. The latest company to be affected is Optimal Payments (OPAY) who presented at a recent ShareSoc seminar. The share price fell substantially after comments from a well known blogger, and declined as much as 22% on the 14th November after the comments were widely circulated on bulletin boards. A number of other public company directors ...

Progress on the Kay Review

Back in 2011 the Government commissioned Prof. John Kay to review the operation of UK stock markets. There were concerns about "short-termism" by investors, poor corporate governance in companies, excessive executive pay, lack of engagement by investors with companies, high investment charges and excessive intermediation in the investment chain. The resulting report was a very good analysis of the defects in the way the market operated and the recommendations in the report for change were generally accepted by the Government. The Government ...

Why should nominee operators have rights?

Following a meeting at the BIS Department where I discussed the issues associated with Part 9 of the Companies Act, and our suggestion that all shareholders (including those in nominee accounts) be on the share register of companies, I had some further thoughts on this subject. On reflection it seems very odd to me that nominee operators (i.e. your stockbroker) have the rights endowed by the Companies Act on shareholders. Investors in nominee accounts have no such rights (voting rights, information rights, ...