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Two more AIM Exits – Ludorum and Armour Group

Two more departures from AIM were recently announced - Ludorum (LUD) and Armour Group (AMR). Ludorum have been developing a market for their animated children's TV series based on Chuggington trains and associated consumer products. But revenue has never really taken off as investors hoped. Along with the interim results announced on the 15th December (again somewhat disappointing), the company announced a proposed delisting from AIM.  These are the reasons given in the announcement: The factors taken into consideration by the Directors in ...

Better Finance comments on the EU Shareholder Rights Directive

Better Finance, a representative body for European shareholder associations, has issued a press release commenting on the review of the Shareholder Rights Directive. It points out a number of defects in the proposals. Here are extracts from the press release: "Guillaume Prache, managing director of Better Finance has stressed that many individual shareholders of EU companies will still have to pay high fees to exercise their voting rights across borders within the EU. If the internal market for capital is to carry ...

Vanguard backing shareholder committees

According to a report in the Financial Times this morning, Vanguard is to promote the idea of "shareholder liaison committees" to improve corporate governance. This is of particular significance because Vanguard is one of the largest investment groups in the world and overtook Pimco last year to become the second largest fund manager.  Vanguard primarily runs low cost index tracker funds and therefore has to hold all major companies. Indeed they are one of the largest holders of shares in many ...

Chancellor’s Autumn Statement – What’s in it for investors?

The Chancellor's statement yesterday was clearly aimed at the typical house buying, ISA invested, traditional Conservative voter, anticipating the May general election next year. The reform of stamp duty on houses is surely rational, but won't necessarily have a lot of impact on those who already own a house other than at the very top end in London. The share prices of Berkeley Group and Foxton's fell on the announcement but soon recovered. Other housebuilders were viewed as benefiting however. Apart from ...

Closet index trackers – are you paying over the odds?

Organisation Better Finance, a representative body for European individual investors, have raised the issue of " closet index trackers" and their fund management charges. It is suggested that many funds who pretend to be "active" in nature (as opposed to simple index trackers or passive funds) are not in reality because they hold very much the same stocks as index funds. This means that their performance is very similar to index funds. However, they charge management fees that are more like ...