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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 ...

Eurasia Erasure

by Mark Lauber, Director, ShareSoc Eurasia Mining is a junior mining company listed on the AIM market. Having traded in a range of 0.4 to 0.7p for the last two years, it spiked up in October 2019, reaching a price of 7.2p by the time it was suspended on 11 February. The reason given for the suspension was that clarification of the relationship with CITIC was required. On 9 April a further RNS was issued, stating that WH Ireland had resigned as Nomad, ...

Unsatisfactory Avast AGM, and Designated Accounts

I “attended” the Avast (AVST) Annual General Meeting today. This was of course held on-line using Zoom with only one director in physical attendance (Warren Finegold) who chaired the meeting. Zoom seems to be becoming the de facto standard for on-line meetings. The Chairman of the company, John Schwarz, gave a brief presentation backed up by some slides. To summarise, it was another strong year of growth and profitability. A new CEO is now in place. EBITDA was up 8% with strong ...