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ShareSoc Blog

This blog gives you the latest topical news plus some informal comments on them from ShareSoc’s directors and other contributors. These are the personal comments of the authors and not necessarily the considered views of ShareSoc. The writers may hold shares in the companies mentioned. You can add your own comments on the blog posts, but note that ShareSoc reserves the right to remove or edit comments where they are inappropriate or defamatory.

There is more news given in the News page of our web site and more analysis of news is provided in our monthly newsletter for members – see the Newsletters page.

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Rights Issues/Open Offers. Should I take up M&S and Egdon?

I am quite keen on the potential of fracking in the UK and own some shares in Egdon. The USA has seen its economy transformed, as it moved very quickly to adopt this new technology and once again has become self sufficient in oil. Sadly (for me), the UK government has been slow to see the economic benefits of fracking and my investment in Egdon has languished. The company has just launched a £2m open offer to finance its next stages of ...

GoGompare AGM and a Generous Remuneration Scheme

Yesterday (23rd May) I attended the Annual General Meeting of GoCompare.com Group (GOCO) which was actually renamed GoCo Group at the meeting. This was held in the City of London at 3.00 pm but even so there were still very few ordinary shareholders present – less than ten I would guess. The company’s main business is a price comparison web service, particularly focused on car insurance, but also covering utilities and other products. It is of course fronted by Italian opera singer ...

Accesso Technology AGM Report

I attended the Annual General Meeting of Accesso Technology (ACSO) this morning (21st May) at their offices west of London. With a 10.00 am start time there were only about ten ordinary shareholders there. This company provides ticketing and queuing systems for theme parks and other visitor attractions. It had a great share price performance under the management of former CEO and then Executive Chairman Tom Burnet (who is still on the board as a non-exec director) until October 2018 when the ...

AB Dynamics Placing, and Metro Bank Troubles

AB Dynamics (ABDP) announced a placing to raise £50 million this morning. The money will be used to finance potential acquisitions, add production capacity and meet working capital requirements. This company provides vehicle testing systems and has been rapidly expanding recently. The share price has also been rising like a rocket in the last few weeks and on fundamentals the company is now very highly rated – prospective p/e for the current year is 47. So perhaps the company just saw ...

Chas Stanley Prices Crest Membership At Ridiculous Level

Charles Stanley have sent out a letter to all their customers who use Personal Crest accounts that in future they will be charged £504 per annum (inc. VAT). Although the company stopped offering the service to new customers some time ago, existing users have in some cases been paying nothing to be a Personal Crest member. They clearly want to get rid of all such users of their service, include those using the low-cost Chas Stanley Direct platform because £504 is ...

Response to BEIS on the FRC Kingman proposals

In a detailed joint ShareSoc-UKSA 12-page Response to BEIS on the FRC Kingman proposals, we said we support the general thrust of the Kingman proposals. Kingman is proposing a new authority to replace the FRC. We also made some more general points: Sound financial reporting is a basic prerequisite for good stewardship. However, no matter how good the financial reporting is, if a significant proportion of investors are disenfranchised and unable to make their voice heard, many of the benefits of better financial reporting will ...

Mello Trust and Funds Event and ShareSoc AGM

I managed to attend part of the Mello Trust and Funds Event in West London yesterday and although I had other commitments today, I may manage to attend the second day of the main Mello 2019 event tomorrow. If you have not attended one of these events before, it is definitely worth doing so. The only slight criticism I would have is that getting to Chiswick from South East London where I live via the slow District Line is not great. ...

Closet Indexing

I am returning to the subject of closet indexing, which is the name given to asset managers who claim to be active managers and charge active fees, but make their investments so that they are unlikely to underperform the index or outperform it. We have made the point to the FCA in a consultation response about the problems with closet trackers. It is good to see the FT giving the issue high profile coverage. The FT published an article on 8 May ...

Good News – Autonomy CFO Jailed

Good news – former CFO of public company jailed for fiddling the accounts. Oh to see that happen more often so as to deter manipulation of accounts that is so prevalent and so damaging to investors. Sushovan Hussain, the former CFO of software company Autonomy, was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment by a US Court yesterday plus he was fined $4 million and ordered to forfeit $6.1 million he made from the sale of the company to Hewlett-Packard. He won’t even be ...

(BEIS) Parliament Committee Report on executive pay is highly critical of companies and fund managers

By Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director My comments on this report of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Parliamentary Committee, published 26 March 2019, are: This report very much endorses ShareSoc’s view that pay in FTSE 100 companies is too high, and probably most companies could recruit good executives for half the current rates of remuneration. We published our views in 2016 see ShareSoc’s remuneration guidelines see https://www.sharesoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/ShareSoc-Remuneration-Guidelines-Large-companies-2016.06.07-.pdf . We were ahead of the curve and it is good to see others ...
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