Insolvency and Administration

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 ...
Post Date: May 28, 2020 Read more

Dividends Slashed, Investing for Income, NMC Health and Finablr

Many companies are announcing cancelled, reduced or postponed dividends – two of the latest were Shell (RDSB) and Sainsburys (SBRY). This will hit investors hard who rely on dividends for retirement income. But should they be doing so? Terry Smith of Fundsmith had an article published in the Financial Times today under the headline “Investors: never let a crisis go to waste” in which he attacks income funds. In particular he questions whether the Investment Association should allow funds with “income” in ...
Post Date: April 30, 2020 Read more

Insolvency changes announced by Alok Sharma

The UK government has announced new insolvency measures to prevent businesses unable to meet debts due to the impact of coronavirus from being forced to file for bankruptcy. Alok...
Post Date: March 29, 2020 Read more

Thomas Cook – The end of the road

We had quite a lot of enquiries about Thomas Cook and what actions shareholders might take. We have until now adopted a watching brief. We recently had a teleconference...
Post Date: March 28, 2020 Read more

Slater Investments Warns on Pay, and Flybe Bail-Out

Slater Investments has issued a warning to companies of their “dissatisfaction with the framework of directors’ remuneration in most public companies”. Slater Investments run a number of funds managed...
Post Date: January 16, 2020 Read more

De La Rue, Excessive Debt, Victoria and Link’s Debt Monitor

Link Asset Services have issued a note pointing out that De La Rue (DLAR) has net debt that now exceeds its market cap. The high debt in the company...
Post Date: November 29, 2019 Read more

GB Group, Patisserie Holdings, FRC Stewardship Code and Halma

The stock market seems to be in limbo as business waits to see the outcome of Brexit politics. In my portfolio, small cap companies are drifting down and even...
Post Date: October 27, 2019 Read more

Another Update on the SVS Special Administration

Since my last update, there have been several significant developments: Leonard Curtis have published a “Statement of Proposals”, setting out their plans for returning client money and assets A...
Post Date: October 14, 2019 Read more

An Update on SVS Securities

On 5th August the FCA announced that broker SVS Securities had entered Special Administration. Once again, as in the case of Beaufort Securities, this is a situation that will...
Post Date: September 14, 2019 Read more

Grant Thornton, Interserve and Arc Fund Management

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) have announced an investigation into the audits by Grant Thornton of the accounts of Interserve (IRV) in the years 2015-2017. Interserve was a large outsourcing company with most of its business from Government contracts. It ran out of cash and went into administration on the 15th March with debts of £738 million. Readers will no doubt be aware that Grant Thornton were also the auditors of Patisserie Holdings and Globo, both cases where very substantial fraud ...
Post Date: April 12, 2019 Read more