The Government is selling off another tranche of its holding in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). By selling another 8% it will reduce its holding to 62% of the company. The Government (or “taxpayers” as some described them) will face a loss of about £2 billion on what it originally paid for the shares. There were howls of protest from some politicians. John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, said “There is no economic justification for this sell-off of RBS shares. There should be no sale of RBS shares full-stop. But particularly with such a large loss to the taxpayers who bailed out the bank”.
I think he is suffering from the problem of “loss aversion”, i.e. a reluctance to sell a losing investment rather than looking at the current value of the bank and its prospects. The market price is surely the best indicator of the value of the company – it’s what willing buyers will pay, and what sellers consider a fair price. One aspect to consider is that the value of the business may be depressed because nobody likes to buy shares in companies where there is one dominant controlling shareholder and particularly so if that shareholder is a government. The only way the UK Government can solve that problem is to reduce its holding in stages, as they are doing. Forget the prospective loss on the share sale. Better to accept the price offered and reinvest the proceeds in something else. The Government has lots of things where it needs more cash – the NHS, Education, Defence, Brexit plans, you name it.
Mr McDonnell may be particularly unhappy as he hopes to take power at the next General Election and RBS is one of the few remnants of the past Labour government’s major stakes in UK banks. After Gordon Brown nationalised Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, they took effective control of RBS, and to a large extent Lloyds. Only Barclays managed to escape by doing a quick deal with middle-east investors which has been the subject of legal action, only recently thrown out by the courts. For any socialist, particularly of the extreme left like Mr McDonnell, the ability to tell banks what to do is an undoubted objective. Banks tend to reduce lending when the economy worsens and their clients start to have difficulties but the claim is often that such reduction in lending compounds the economic woes.
Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Blackrock Smaller Companies Trust Plc (BRSC). What follows are some brief highlights. This company has a good track record – some 15 consecutive years of outperforming its benchmark by active management. So much for passive index investing. It has been managed by Mike Prentis for many years assisted by Roland Arnold more recently. The share price rose by 25% last year but the discount to NAV has narrowed recently to about 6% so some might say it is no longer a great bargain. The company does not have a fixed discount control mechanism and has traded at much higher discounts in the past.
It’s a stock-pickers portfolio of UK smaller companies, including 43% of AIM companies and 143 holdings in total. Many of the holdings are the same companies I have invested in directly, e.g. GB Group who issued their annual results on the same day with another great set of figures.
Mike Prentis gave his key points for investing in a company as: strong management, a unique business with strong pricing power, profitable track record, throwing off cash, profits convert into cash and a strong balance sheet. They generally go for small holdings initially, even when they invest in IPOs, i.e. they are cautious investors.
When it came to questions, one shareholder questioned the allocation of management fees as against income or capital (25% to 75% in this company). He suggested this was reducing the amount available for reinvestment. But he was advised otherwise. Such allocation is now merely an accounting convention, particularly as dividends can now be paid out of capital. But he could not be convinced otherwise.
Another investor congratulated the board on removing the performance fee. Shareholders were clearly happy, and nobody commented on the fact that the Chairman, Nicholas Fry had been on the board since 2005 and the SID, Robert Robertson, had also been there more than 9 years – both contrary to the UK Corporate Governance Code. The latter did collect 5% of votes against his re-election, but all resolutions were passed on a show of hands.
I was positively impressed on the whole.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
All placings should have some element reserved for retail shareholders. We must continue to lobby for this to all companies. See my letter to the FT https://www.ft.com/content/014a7aca-698a-11e8-b6eb-4acfcfb08c11
and response from Jonathan Reynolds MP
Shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury, House of Commons, London SW1, UK https://www.ft.com/content/59eaeb7e-6b1a-11e8-8cf3-0c230fa67aec