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.

Unhelpful Computershare provide RBS register in ugly pdf format

I am writing this blog to castigate Computershare for their unhelpful service and suggest that registrars should be required to respond to valid register requests with a more usable response.

I recently requested a copy of the RBS register of shareholders. I wanted this so we could write to RBS shareholders about the upcoming resolution for a shareholder committee at the 2019 RBS AGM.

Despite repeated requests, Computershare refused to provide the register in a user friendly format. I know that the Computershare system is capable of providing reports in excel and so I asked for the output in an Excel format.

Computershare refused to provide a single excel sheet and instead provided me with 24 pdf files. The format was several lines for each shareholder and this wrapped around, making it even more unhelpful.

The Computershare response was pathetic and petty. I suspect they were encouraged to behave in this way by RBS, but have no evidence to prove this.

Converting pdf files into a usable excel spreadsheet is possible but takes time and hard work. Fortunately ShareSoc member Alun Morris was able to help and I wish to thank Alun for his valuable assistance.

I now have a nice excel worksheet with 185,000 plus rows, one for each shareholder.

So all that Computershare and RBS have done is to annoy me by their petty and pathetic actions.

Cliff Weight, RBS Shareholder Committee Campaign Coordinator

12 Feb 2019.

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