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Voting Against Directors at Greggs and MAV4

Greggs (GRG) held their Annual General Meeting today. This was a “closed” meeting but with no electronic access provided. Bearing in mind the size of the company, it seems unreasonable that they could not have provided shareholder access. But I note that the votes reported show that several directors received substantial votes against. For example Ian Durant at 4.8% and Sandra Turner at 7.7%. I wonder why? There were also substantial numbers of votes withheld but no explanation has been given. One advantage ...

AIM market statistics

by Cliff Weight, Sharesoc Director. Allenby have just published this very informative review of AIM: http://www.allenbycapital.com/research_1214_2120899233.pdf which contains many interesting statistics. The AIM market is at the same level it was 20 years ago, but the journey between has been very volatile. However the last 5 years, with the exception of last March's blip, has been most encouraging. It may be that fewer scandals than in the past have occurred. However ShareSoc is still campaigning hard to get better regulation of the AIM ...

Restoring Trust in Audit and Corporate Governance

As it’s Friday afternoon with not much happening, and I have completed my latest complaint about the time it’s taking to complete a SIPP platform transfer, I decided to have a look at the public consultation on “Restoring Trust in Audit and Corporate Governance” from the BEIS Department. This is a quite horrendous consultation on the Government’s proposals to improve audit standards and director behaviour as foretold in the Kingman and Brydon reviews, with proposals for a new regulatory body (ARGA). That’s ...

OCDO : OCADO – Company Information and Vote Guidance

by Cliff Weight, Director, ShareSoc. These are my personal views and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. I do not own shares in Ocado, but wish I had! Ocado summary of voting issues The AGM is on May 13th, 2021. The share price is worth a recap. The Stocko data shows the graph since IPO, which I think was around 160p. It looked like Ocado was overpriced as its share price collapsed to 80p, on Guy Fawkes' day Nov 5, 2012. If you had ...

PRU : Prudential – Company Information and Vote Guidance

by Cliff Weight, Director, ShareSoc. These are my personal views and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. I own shares in Prudential and M&G. PRU summary of voting issues The AGM is on May 13th, 2021. The Pru demerged M&G in Oct 2019, and now focuses on the Far East. The Stockopedia graph shows the modest share price increase since demerger and the (good) long term growth. However, Stockopedia now labels Pru as a "momentum trap". The Minerva report highlights various issues: Remuneration Report: Benefit concerns. High bonus ...