Collective Investments

Fund Charges – and Discounts

by Alan Reeder, ShareSoc member The thorny subject of Fund charges and discounts has been much discussed in the Press recently – along with the pros and cons of investing in Investment Trusts versus Funds. Amid all the discussions of where to invest, a factor often overlooked is the difference in Annual Management Charge (AMC) levied by the Fund Manager.  It is important to bear in mind that although this AMC can vary from one broking House to another – it is the ...

Bank Dividends and Fundsmith Performance

The bad news for many private investors is that most of the major listed UK banks are suspending dividend payments, even ones already announced. This is after they received a letter from the Bank of England requesting that they do so. The dividends are unlikely to be resumed before the end of the year. This is surely a prudent measure as the banks will undoubtedly have many requests for loans from companies to tide them over the virus crisis, while other ...

ShareSoc Campaign has Successful Outcome at Albion

ShareSoc is pleased with the outcome of this consultation with shareholders following the shareholders 30% vote against the fee proposal at the General Meeting in August 2019. This shows:...

Miton UK Smaller Companies Fund In Decline

There was an interesting article published a couple of days ago by Citywire on the problems at the LF Miton UK Smaller Companies Fund. The fund is managed by...

Directors’ and Fund Managers’ Pay is Excessive

On the latest data, the pay of FTSE-100 CEOs has fallen slightly. A report from the CIPD and High Pay Centre notes that the average pay has fallen from...

Edinburgh IT Fires Manager

The Edinburgh Investment Trust (EDIN) has fired fund manager Invesco. This company is an equity income trust focused primarily on the UK, although it also has an objective to...

Mindless Investment Wins Out?

Last week on-line investment news site Citywire published a report headlined “Tracker fund sales smash records as UK investors pile into passives”. I was the first to add a...

M&G Property Fund Closed and M&C Saatchi Accounting Problems

The really bad news yesterday for many investors was that the £2.5 billion M&G Property Portfolio Fund had been closed to redemptions. This is of course an open-ended fund...

Retail Shareholder Participation in Voting – US study

Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director reviews Retail Shareholder Participation in the Proxy Process: Monitoring, Engagement, and Voting: Working Paper N° 637/2019 November 2019: By Alon Brav, Matthew D. Cain, Jonathon Zytnick This...

One in 10 investment trust board directors have no ‘skin in the game’

By Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director The new remuneration guidelines from the Investment Association have this to say about Share Ownership: Non-Executive Shareholding Shareholders encourage non-executive directors to own shares...