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Delays in SIPP and ISA transfers

Last week I complained to Hargreaves Lansdown about the delay in transferring a SIPP to another broker. The receiving broker has been chasing it but to no effect. It has been "pending" now for almost two months and I cannot understand the reason for such a long delay. What do I read on Friday but a number of similar complaints from readers of Investors Chronicle. There seems to be a consistent problem here, even where the transfer should be fairly straightforward. If for ...

Thoughts on AstraZeneca

Shareholders in AstraZeneca are no doubt pleasantly surprised by the uplift in the share price following the offers from Pfizer. The share price has doubled in the last year on improving prospects with an even sharper increase in the last few weeks as soon as a bid was rumoured. That puts the company on a historic p/e of about 20 at the time of writing. AstraZeneca has of course been a dog for some years with falling revenue and earnings, a poor ...

Selftrade annoys its customers

Selftrade, the execution-only stockbroker, has annoyed a large number of its customers by sending out a form asking for a lot of personal information about themselves. For example, several ShareSoc Members have contacted us to complain about the intrusive nature of the questions (which they consider a breach of privacy) and about the difficulty in completing the form due to the amount of detail required. It also generated a vociferous series of negative comments on Citywire after they mentioned the story ...

Barclays wins vote on pay

Barclays Bank Annual General Meeting yesterday showed how difficult it is to get excessive pay awards voted down. Despite strong opposition from PIRC, F&C and Standard Life (the latter actually spoke at the meeting which is unusual for institutions), only 24% of votes were cast against the Remuneration Report with an even lower number against the Remuneration Policy. There were a number of shareholders who abstained so the media commonly reported 34% of shareholders  as failing to support the board, but ...

Quindell – and how to avoid the shorters

Quindell, a company operating in the insurance sector, came under attack yesterday by Gotham City Research LLC, an investment analysis firm. Quindell's shares ended down on the day by 39% and were down more than 50% at one point. Gotham City make numerous allegations in a 74-page document which is available from their web site. Without a lot more knowledge of this company and a detailed study of these allegations, it is impossible to comment on the substance of them, but some ...