This blog gives you the latest topical news plus some informal comments on them from ShareSoc’s directors and other contributors. These are the personal comments of the authors and not necessarily the considered views of ShareSoc. The writers may hold shares in the companies mentioned. You can add your own comments on the blog posts, but note that ShareSoc reserves the right to remove or edit comments where they are inappropriate or defamatory.

Alliance Trust Savings Sold

Alliance Trust (ATST) has sold its Alliance Trust Savings (ATS) subsidiary to privately-owned company Interactive Investor. The ATS investment platform was always a peculiar business for a traditional investment trust to be holding. It was also consistently loss-making and reported an operating loss of £19.3 million in 2017 after a big write down of intangible assets. The directors valued the ATS business at £38.3 million in the 2017 accounts and Interactive Investor are paying £40 million for it but it looks like they are getting the Dundee offices of ATS valued at £4.9 million in addition.

The ATS business will continue to operate from Dundee as will Alliance Trust itself. But there will presumably be some rationalisation of IT systems in due course so clients of ATS may need to learn new software eventually. Charges might also presumably be harmonised also. Interactive Investor charge a fixed quarterly fee of £22.50 which covers some trading fees. Otherwise trading charges are £10 per trade, or less for frequent traders. This structure means that charges do not rise as your portfolio grows and is particularly well liked by those with larger portfolios.

The disposal of ATS was always on the cards after the revolution and board changes a couple of years ago at Alliance Trust which ShareSoc had a hand in. This looks a good deal for both Alliance Trust and users of the ATS platform. It completes the dismantling of the empire built by former CEO Katherine Garrett-Cox.

It is also another step in the consolidation of the “investment platforms” market which is certainly a trend as a lot of them aren’t making much in the way of profits at present (other than Hargreaves Lansdown covered in the previous blog post).

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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