Blogs

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Fund Charges and Transaction Costs

In 2015-2017, the FCA reviewed and consulted on the asset management industry and one of its key recommendations was greater clarity on charges. Chris Sier was appointed to make recommendations on how this should be done. His focus was on pension funds and the costs they incurred from their fund managers. Today, I saw a LinkedIn post by Chris, which I found illuminating and contains links to two further articles, for those who are interested in this area. Chris, who was ...

Scottish Mortgage Investment Policy and LSE RNS Announcements

The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) have issued their Annual Report and AGM Notice. Readers who hold this trust will not need reminding that it has shown a remarkable performance over the last few months. That’s when the stock market has been decimated by the Covid-19 epidemic and the share prices of many other similar trusts and of the companies they hold have fallen sharply. Last year SMT achieved a total share price return of 12.7% to the end of March and ...

The Ideal Board – Some Tips from First Flight

Chris Spencer-Phillips, Managing Director of First Flight Non-Executive and ShareSoc Director has written the attached useful article describing attributes of the "Ideal Board". As well as for company boards, we think it will be of interest to our members. the-ideal-board-march-2020

The New Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

The Government has introduced the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill into Parliament. This is quite an important piece of legislation for share investors and for property investors. Insolvency practitioners will also be interested as it makes substantial changes to that area. It’s had very little media coverage though as the news channels are swamped by coronavirus news, debate over Dominic Cummings breaking the lock-down (or not depending on your point of view) and Brexit news. The Bill is being “fast tracked” through ...

A Liquidity Fairy-tale

Introduction This article is about the prices you pay or get when you buy or sell shares. It may seem somewhat technical and arcane, but please bear with me, as those prices can have a significant effect on your investment results and hence this issue affects all investors. I will cite a specific example which illustrates how much existing systems that your broker offers are costing you. Quote Driven Markets vs Order Driven Markets There has been a longstanding debate about the merits of ...