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Blancco Campaign Update #4

Campaign members will recall that the restatements of the Blancco accounts for year ending June 2016 and other accounting corrections led to a loss of over £135 million in shareholder value. The previous CEO exercised Stock Appreciation Rights prior to the disclosure of these restatements. ShareSoc referred these issues to the Financial Conduct Authority in January 2018 and, as far as the audit by KPMG was concerned to the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England & Wales (ICAEW) in February 2018. ICAEW ...

Shenanigans in Siberia: the Petropavlovsk Saga and Why Retail Investors Matter

One of ShareSoc’s key beliefs is that private investors are important and their voice needs to be heard. The current, for want of a better word, shenanigans, at Petropavlovsk (POG) gives private investors a key role in determining the future of a company. Background Books could be written about POG, and probably deserve to be. It is a gold miner in Siberia, whose shares rose to above £5 in 2011, before collapsing under the weight of debt and being rescued by an emergency ...

Capital Gains Tax Reform? Surely Long Overdue

CGT Review Last week the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) announced a review of Capital Gains Tax. They have invited evidence and there is a simple on-line survey you can complete on the subject (see link below). As someone who occasionally pays capital gains tax, I give you my views on the subject below. It is of course a horribly complex tax with several different rates and numerous exemptions. I need to employ an accountant to work out my self-assessment tax returns when ...

Festival of Property Funds from QuotedData

For those of you who are interested in property funds, I came across this interesting looking series of webinars hosted by QuotedData and taking place over the next 3 weeks - https://quoteddata.com/events/quoteddatas-property-webinar-series-2/ It covers a good range of property funds, trusts and REITs and might be worth a look.  Mike Dennis

It Pays to Take Note of Shorters

An article by ShareSoc member Michael Taylor In light of the recent Burford Capital judgement that my friend Paul de Gruchy has written about in detail here, this has led to much debate about shorting, some of which I hope to add to here in this article. Is shorting bad? Yes and no. It can be. A broker who goes short on a stock then offers to conduct an equity placing for the same company in order to close their position is clearly blatant ...