ShareSoc Blog
The ShareSoc blog provides news and informal commentary from directors, members and other contributors. Entries reflect the personal views of the authors, which do not necessarily reflect ShareSoc’s formal position. Contributors may hold shares in the companies mentioned. Nothing in this blog should be viewed as financial advice. You may submit comments on blog posts, but ShareSoc reserves the right to remove or edit inappropriate or defamatory submissions.
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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The Financial Conduct Authority’s Sector Views publication provides its annual analysis of the changing financial landscape, the resulting impacts on consumers and market effectiveness. This analysis will feed into the FCA Business Plan 2019/20.
Although the Sector Views are not a consultation, the FCA are interested in the views of stakeholders on its findings. ShareSoc & UKSA made a joint submission. The main points we made were:
We are appalled that Sector Views fails to give sufficient weight to the damning criticisms of ...
Our relationships with key opinion formers continue to grow. Peter Parry, Mike Dennis, Mark Bentley and I had a very useful meeting with BEIS on 8 Jan and at their request I have written explaining why the Minister should now act on the nominee account issue. A copy of my letter of 18 Feb is below. (The reason for the long delay in writing this letter was due to illness. It was delayed due my trip to Cambodia and Vietnam, and then ...
ShareSoc and UKSA joint response to the FCA Sector Views consultation is available here.
Superstar share Plus500 has plummeted back to Earth. This super stock rose from a price of £3.14 5 years ago (14 Feb 2014) to a high of £20.76 and following a profits warning has dropped to £10.88 today 13 Feb 2019.
Tom Winnifrith has commented on this company and the dangers of investing in companies where 80% of their customers lose money. I agree with him, this cannot be a recipe for long term success.
But are the directors stupid or have they ...
Keystone Law have announced that they are about to launch a legal claim against Petrofac (PFC). This is what the announcement says: “Keystone Law is getting ready to launch a claim on behalf of institutional investors who have suffered significant losses on their Petrofac investments since at least 2010. The team, led by senior litigators George Lambrou, Matthew Reach and Robert Lawrie, has joined forces with litigation funder, Innsworth, to mount legal action against the oil services company. The claim is ...
I am writing this blog to castigate Computershare for their unhelpful service and suggest that registrars should be required to respond to valid register requests with a more usable response.
I recently requested a copy of the RBS register of shareholders. I wanted this so we could write to RBS shareholders about the upcoming resolution for a shareholder committee at the 2019 RBS AGM.
Despite repeated requests, Computershare refused to provide the register in a user friendly format. I know that the Computershare system is capable of ...
UKSA and ShareSoc made a a joint response to the FRC Post Implementation Review of 2016 Ethical and Auditing Standards
The main points we made were:
We welcome the FRC’s decision to hold a post-implementation review of the 2016 Ethical and Auditing standards.
The audit profession and audits are in a state of crisis. The recent cases of Carillion, Conviviality, Patisserie Holdings, Flybe and Interserve make investors very worried as to whether they can trust accounts. It is not just the high ...
ShareSoc and UKSA joint response to FRC Post Implementation Review of 2016 Ethical and Auditing Standards is available here.
98.7% of shareholders voted for the proposal, with 1.3% against. A very strong majority. UKGI did not vote their shares.
I watched the General Meeting on the webcast. Attendance looked pretty thin. Three people asked questions. Neil Mitchell questioned the prudence of using company funds to buy back shares when there was £15bn of GR legacy issues claims outstanding. He also questioned why there had to be so much haste (why not wait until the AGM and after the annual results were ...
I mentioned in a previous blog post yesterday the judgement in the case of the alleged breach of duty by Grant Thornton (GT) when acting as auditors of AssetCo Plc (ASTO) in 2009/10. See https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2019/150.html for the full judgement. For those who have not had the opportunity to read all 300 pages of the judgement, here are some interesting points from it:
It was conceded that the audit was negligent in a number of respects, but GT’s defense against the damages claim ...
