Nominee Accounts

Hargreaves Lansdown doubles charges for some investors

On the 15th January Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) announced new charges on its investment platform, which is one of the most widely used by private investors. The changes are no doubt provoked by the new rules whereby funds can no longer pass part of their charges back to HL, as a result of the RDR (Retail Distribution Review). But the changes will mean that the annual fees paid to HL by some investors will double. ShareSoc has issued a press release explaining ...

Survey on voting and nominee accounts

ShareSoc is working on a campaign regarding shareholder rights for private shareholders and it is important for us to obtain the evidence on whether you vote the shares you hold at General Meetings, whether you attend such meetings and whether you receive information from the companies in which you invest. We have therefore sent a survey to all of our members asking them to respond. It is also possible for non-members to complete the survey using the link below (please also ...

The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement – What’s in it for investors?

You may well be worse off if you are dead. The Government is to clamp down on the payment of state pensions to people who are dead, which is apparently a particular problem when they move overseas upon retirement.Otherwise these are come of the changes and how they may affect individual investors:- As expected, there is to be a restriction on Venture Capital Trust (VCT) "enhanced share buy-backs" upon which there was a recent consultation. In future VCT investments that are ...

Transparency and Trust – Consultation Response Submitted

ShareSoc is submitting a response to the BIS Discussion Paper on “Transparency & Trust” which can be read here:  www.sharesoc.org/Transparency_&_Trust_ShareSoc_Response.pdf . This wide ranging consultation is on a number of proposals to tackle many problems in the modern corporate scene, with a particular focus on tax avoidance and money laundering. Knowing who controls and owns companies is one of the concerns, but it also aims to tackle incompetent and fraudulent directors. A summary of the key points ShareSoc made in our ...

The Vodafone deal – another reason to dislike nominee accounts

Vodafone shareholders will no doubt be aware that the deal recently announced regarding the company’s stake in Verizon Wireless will result in shareholders receiving not just cash, but also some Verizon shares. Verizon is of course a US listed company. Now many retail shareholders may not wish to hold shares in a US listed company, so they might want to sell their Verizon shares. The company has said that they will provide a dealing facility to enable holders of less than 50,000 ...

FT article on dematerialisation

The Financial Times published a long article by Jonathan Eley entitled “What price shareholder democracy?” on Saturday. It was in the FTMoney supplement and covered the issue of nominee accounts, dematerialisation and prospective EU legislation. Mr Eley covered most of the issues well but here’s a note I have sent him to explain a few points.Dear Jonathan,Regarding your article at the weekend on shareholder democracy and nominee accounts, which was generally very sound, a few points:1. Not all listed companies like ...