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Good news from Hargreaves Lansdown

Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) have issued a press release announcing changes to their Vantage service. It mentions that they "listen carefully to their feedback" from clients and invest heavily in improvements. Some of the latest changes that may be of particular interest to readers include the following (refer to the HL web site for the complete list) : - Removal of the recently introduced corporate action fee including the charge for voting shares. - Free live share prices. - An on-line tax centre to help ...

AIM and other regulatory changes

Effective from the 11th August, there are additional requirements under AIM Rule 26. Rule 26 covers what information is required to be published on a company's web site - for example the listing prospectus and last Annual Report. In future a company must disclose what corporate governance code the company is using, or not as the case may be. Currently AIM companies often refer to the Quoted Companies Alliance (QCA) Corporate Governance Code for Small and Mid-Size Quoted Companies, some use ...

Members’ Conference Call

ShareSoc is keen to engage with its members. We appreciate that it is not always easy for all our members to get to our members’ meetings, which are the primary forum for discussion about the issues we are tackling on behalf of our membership, and the services we offer.Therefore, we would like to offer our full members the opportunity to communicate their wishes and concerns via a telephone conference call. This will take place at 7pm on 10th September. Full members ...

Best Execution is Not Always the Best

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have undertaken a review of "best execution". This is a simple principle enforced as part of the FCA's Rule Book that requires your stockbroker to always obtain the best execution if you give them an order. That primarily means obtaining the best price where there are multiple markets on which the trade can be dealt but speed of execution, settlement terms and certainty of execution can also be taken into account. A stockbroker should be acting ...

Shareholders voting without knowing what for at Majestic Wine

Shareholders at Majestic Wine were given a proxy voting form that included two common resolutions - a vote on the Remuneration Report and a vote on Remuneration Policy. But there was no description of the Remuneration Policy in the Annual Report. As a shareholder in the company, I found this somewhat baffling and therefore voted against the second of those resolutions on the basis of not knowing what I might be voting for. The company subsequently withdrew those resolutions on the because ...