Nominee Accounts

A Bad Day in the Market, but Good News from Unilever and BEIS

It was a bad day in the market yesterday, with the FTSE All-Share falling over 1%. This seems to have been driven by a sell off in bonds. Equity prices are usually linked to bond prices simply because as bond yields rise from a fall in bond prices, it becomes more attractive to hold bonds relative to equities. That particularly applies to shares that are “bond proxies”, i.e. ones bought because of their high yields for income seeking investors. These changes have ...
5th October 2018 Read more

Shareholder rights, letters to MPs and questions at AGMs – An Update

Over 20 members have to my knowledge written to their MPs (as we requested) and a number of members have asked questions at AGMs. We have certainly raised the issue. The Minister (or most likely his civil servants) have produced what looks like a standard response which is being sent to those MPs who contacted Greg Clarke MP, the Secretary of State. Their response argues that the UK does not have to follow the intent of the EU Shareholder Rights Directive and ...
17th August 2018 Read more

Stopping Another Beaufort Case

Readers are probably aware of the administration of stockbroker Beaufort, how PwC are running up enormous bills to the disadvantage of creditors and how they also claimed to be able to charge the bills against client assets under the Special Administration Rules. See here for more information if you are not familiar with this debacle: https://www.sharesoc.org/campaigns/beaufort-client-campaign/ I hope all stock market investors have already written to their Members of Parliament on this topic, not just to get the Special Administration Rules changed ...
9th August 2018 Read more

Premier Foods, stock lending, custodians, shareholder rights and nominee accounts

The background to my comments is below: KATE BURGESS in the FT on 15 July 2018 reported that accusations of empty voting — where investors borrow voting shares for short periods to swing the outcome at meetings —reverberated around the market ahead of Premier Food’s shareholder meeting next week. They were sparked when Oasis Management , the Hong Kong activist hoping to unseat Premier’s chief executive Gavin Darby, said it had increased its stake in the owner of Angel Delight from 9 to ...
25th July 2018 Read more

Protecting Yourself Against Administrations

Investors now know that when your stockbroker goes into administration, your assets are not secure (or “ring fenced” as your contract with them often says) because they can be seized under the Special Administration Regulations by the administrator to pay their costs. This has become clear from the Beaufort case. That means many investors are facing losses because Beaufort client accounts, like most stockbroking accounts now, were nominee accounts with the shares registered in the name of Beaufort. There are two possible ...
8th June 2018 Read more

Beaufort Administration, Intercede and the Mello Conference

Yesterday I attended the first day of the 2-day Mello investor conference in Derby. There were lots of good presentations and some interesting companies to talk to. One hot topic of conversation was the collapse of Beaufort which was forced into administration (see two previous blog posts on the topic for details). There are apparently many people affected by it. There are a number of major issues that have arisen here: The administrators (PWC) have suggested it might cost as much as ...
29th April 2018 Read more

Barclays Stockbroking Complaints

Several newspapers and on-line news services have reported this week on the debacle at Barclays. They launched a new “Smart Investor” site to replace their Barclayshare share trading service. The complaints range from failure to advise new account log-in details, support service uncontactable, old features missing (or perhaps simply moved elsewhere and not easily found in some cases), higher charges (fees restructured), to some account types or share holdings being no longer permitted. Barclays have integrated it with their on-line bank account ...
10th September 2017 Read more

Sophos, Interquest and Government Policy

Yesterday I missed the Sophos (SOPH) AGM due to having a clashing engagement, but I noticed that in the announcement of the voting results that there were substantial votes against the Remuneration Report (29.8% against) and also high votes against most of the directors. One only needs to glance at the Remuneration Policy to see why. The maximum bonus opportunity is 200% of salary, and the maximum LTIP award is 500% of salary in normal circumstances and up to 750% in exceptional ...
8th September 2017 Read more

Fusionex – Another AIM Company Disappears into the Night

In an announcement late Friday afternoon, after market close and just before the long weekend, AIM listed Fusionex announced that it will seek to delist from the AIM market. It’s not clear why this is good for private investors, the company is profitable and has no need to raise funds. The RNS says that a meeting will take place in Malaysia on 15 June to vote on the matter, and that all of the Directors representing 41.93% of shares are in ...
30th May 2017 Read more