Nominee Accounts

Mail, 14 March 2021, SUPERMAN and #sharesocuk Support Shareholder Rights.

It is good news that The Mail on Sunday MailOnline is supporting shareholders and shareholders rights. I get quoted.... Cliff Weight, director of investor campaign group ShareSoc, says wealth platforms make it so difficult for customers to engage that they are 'disenfranchising individual shareholders'. He says: 'Most platforms don't even pass on information and if you want to vote the method offered is practically prehistoric. As a result they're throwing away millions of shareholder votes.' Weight believes platform Interactive Investor is better than most. Eight per cent ...
Post Date: March 14, 2021 Read more

Law Commission Review of Intermediated Securities

The Law Commission has published a “scoping paper” on Intermediated Securities (See Reference 1 below). This might sound a pretty dry technical subject but the subtitle of the report asks the important question – it covers “Who Owns Your Shares?” I have written about the problem of the growth in the use of nominee accounts as on-line platforms have replaced share certificates many times in the past. ShareSoc has a web page with voluminous information on this subject including reports written by ...
Post Date: November 16, 2020 Read more

Chrysalis – Vote NO at 26 November General Meeting

Shareholders are excluded from this GM and there is no pre-meeting webinar to discuss these highly contentious proposals to wind up the VCT and distribute any monies raised (less administration fees, including payments to the failing fund manager and some directors). Several members of the ShareSoc VCT Investor Group (including Tim Grattan, Mark Lauber, Roger Lawson and myself) met on 10 Nov to discuss Chrysalis' plans. Our conclusion was that shareholders should vote against these proposals for the following reasons: Chrysalis is ...
Post Date: November 11, 2020 Read more

Unsatisfactory Avast AGM, and Designated Accounts

I “attended” the Avast (AVST) Annual General Meeting today. This was of course held on-line using Zoom with only one director in physical attendance (Warren Finegold) who chaired the meeting. Zoom seems to be becoming the de facto standard for on-line meetings. The Chairman of the company, John Schwarz, gave a brief presentation backed up by some slides. To summarise, it was another strong year of growth and profitability. A new CEO is now in place. EBITDA was up 8% with strong ...
Post Date: May 21, 2020 Read more

Nominees and Voting: Easy @ii

In respect of Interactive Investor the settings for getting the voting and information service are as below: The first step is to go into your account settings, the rightmost...
Post Date: May 6, 2020 Read more

www.allinvestorsmatter.co.uk – Access to fund raises

Please sign the petition, asking issuers to include retail investors when issuing shares, if you have not already done so. See www.allinvestorsmatter.co.uk The petition already has over 1,000 signatures. Signatories include: Mark Northway, Chairman, ShareSoc Lord Lee of Trafford DL FCA House of Lords Adam McConkey, Chairman, Quoted Companies Alliance Sarah Wilson, CEO, Minerva Analytics Ltd Andy Bell, Founder & CEO AJ Bell Peter Hargreaves, Founder Hargreaves Lansdown Paul Killik, Senior Executive Officer, Killik & Co Gavin Oldham OBE, Chairman Share plc/The Share Centre  ...
Post Date: April 30, 2020 Read more

Shareholder Rights – Response from Kelly Tolhurst, BEIS Minister

There are continuing sign of progress on shareholder rights. The Law Commission Review is progressing and we have received the following letter from the Government. Corporate Responsibility Minister Kelly...
Post Date: March 18, 2020 Read more

Share Centre Takeover and Holding Unlisted Shares

This morning it was announced that the Share Centre (Share Plc: SHRE) were recommending a takeover bid from Antler Holdco, the holding company of Interactive Investor and the ii...
Post Date: February 18, 2020 Read more

Brexit and Why Shareholder Votes Matter

Last night Brexit got done. We exited the EU after 47 years. But we will need to resume the conversation to secure a trade deal. That still leaves room...
Post Date: February 2, 2020 Read more

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...
Post Date: November 21, 2019 Read more