Blogs

Latest Blogs

Delays in SIPP and ISA transfers

I commented on the delays in transferring a SIPP from Hargreaves Lansdown to another provider in the May ShareSoc Newsletter, and we published some letters from other members on similar problems in the June Newsletter. I thought readers might like to know that the original SIPP transfer has now finally completed. It actually took over 5 calendar months to get all the portfolio holdings to transfer (this being an "in-specie" transfer as it is called). This is clearly a quite ridiculous period ...

National Grid and the Problem of High Pay

I attended the Annual General Meeting of National Grid this week (on the 28th July). It was a typical FTSE-100 company AGM with questions on all kinds of matters, mainly from private shareholders of course. There is a full report on the meeting here, where many other AGM reports are supplied for members. I tackled the issue of high remuneration at this company and the change in the LTIP with a couple of questions, and I expected there to be many more ...

High pound also impacts Renishaw and GlaxoSmithKline

Following on from my blog post a couple of days ago about the high pound impacting the profits of technology companies, yesterday saw final results from Renishaw (RSW) and interims from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) which reflected the same issue. However, the currency impact in both companies was not the main impact on the subsequent share price move. At Renishaw, profits would have been £6.8m higher on top of an "adjusted" figure of £70.1m for the year, but for the currency impact. Last years ...

High pound impacts Croda, Abcam and others

Today Croda issued their interim results for the six months to the end of June. Croda is a speciality chemicals company and less than 10% of its revenue arises in the UK. A very substantial proportion comes from the USA and from other dollar denominated sales elsewhere. The high pound (currently over $1.70 to the pound) is having a big impact on companies such as Croda. In the six month figures revenue in constant currency terms is up 2.5% and operating ...

Tesco admits it needs a new leader

Today Tesco announced that CEO Philip Clarke is departing. The statement included a further profit warning which mentioned that the overall market is weaker and trading profit in the first half of the year is below expectations. It's surely an acceptance that Mr Clarke had been given long enough to turn around the business, but had ultimately failed (he has been in the CEO role since March 2011). The new CEO is to be Dave Lewis who joins from Unilever where he has ...