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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 ...

Letter in the FT regarding dematerialised share registration system

 A ShareSoc Member, Michael Coulson, had a letter published in the Financial Times this morning. It points out that there is a tried and tested electronic share registration system called CHESS already in use in Australia. It provides direct share registration for shareholders in a dematerialised form. Mr Coulson suggests it be adopted in the UK rather than have a lengthy and uncertain process of developing a similar system. See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1498a2e4-c58a-11e3-97e4-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz2zcRDWr9t It would surely be a better system than the prevalent use ...

Changes to Company Regulations

Today on Bank Holiday Easter Monday, the Government announced some changes to company regulations. Does this show how they work all the days of the year to improve the UK business environment, or they thought it a good time to announce controversial proposals? You can judge for yourselves the answer to that question after reading what follows. But as most of the proposals were well flagged in advance by past public consultations, they may only be controversial to those companies who ...