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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Are Premier Foods about to be Stuffed?

Post Date: June 28, 2018

Premier Foods (PFD), makers of the famous Paxo stuffing, may itself be about to be stuffed by one of its largest shareholders. Oasis Management Company Ltd who own nearly 10% of PFD, is encouraging all shareholders to vote for the removal of the current CEO, Gavin Darby, at the upcoming AGM on the 18th July. Oasis claim that: “Gavin Darby has driven Premier Foods into its current “zombie-like” state–he has no credible strategy to return Premier Foods to growth. Long-suffering shareholders need ...

Watch out FRC – there’s a new Guv’nor in town

Post Date: June 22, 2018

One of our members - Tony Johnson - who is a Chartered Secretary and longstanding member of ICSA, has brought to my attention ICSA’s planned rebranding to become “The Chartered Governance Institute”. See here for more details - https://www.icsa.org.uk/. ICSA or, should I say, CGI, appear to be positioning themselves as the “go-to” organisation for good corporate governance. Here’s what their President, David Vernon, had to say recently in his letter to members: “Over the last two years, your Council has been implementing ...

Update on Boardroom Battle at Petropavlovsk

Post Date: June 21, 2018

The deadline for voting at the Petropavlovsk AGM on the 29th June (proxy votes need to be in by 27th June) is approaching fast. For those of you who are shareholders and are still undecided on the boardroom tussle that is taking place, and if you haven’t already read the cases for and against, you may like to take a look at the following sources of information: Firstly, the arguments from the incumbent board headed by Chairman Ian Ashby are available here - Petropavlovsk ...

Boardroom Battle at Petropavlovsk

Post Date: June 19, 2018

Those of you who follow Petropavlosvk (POG) will be aware that a boardroom tussle for control is taking place. Two institutional holders, CABS Platform Limited and Slevin Ltd, have requisitioned resolutions to remove the whole of the present board, who have been in place since 2017, and replace them with 3 directors who were previous members of the board including the previous CEO, Dr Pavel Maslovskiy. The two requisitioners are supported by POG’s largest shareholder Fincraft. Proxy votes need to be in by ...

The Quindell Story and the FRC

Post Date: June 12, 2018

5 years on and the FRC has fined KPMG for its performance over Quindell. It has taken far too long. The settlement received a huge amount of coverage in the press, e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/e8ce1a30-6d3d-11e8-852d-d8b934ff5ffa The FRC's official announcement can be found here: https://www.frc.org.uk/news/june-2018/sanctions-in-relation-to-the-audit-of-quindell-plc The KPMG fine of £3.15 million is derisory. It is absurd when compared with the (£2bn) shareholder losses as a result of being misled by the accounts. The average KPMG partner was paid £519k in 2018, and many were paid more. To ...

Beaufort Client Campaign: Update 3

Post Date: June 10, 2018

We are delighted to announce that PwC and the FSCS have substantially improved the plan for returning assets to clients of Beaufort Securities. Details of the new proposals can be found here: https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/business-recovery/administrations/beaufort/latest-news-and-update.html Whereas the original plan stated that the administration may take up to four years and that 700 accounts with a value > £150,000 could suffer losses of up to 40%, in order to fund administration costs PwC now state: "Fewer than ten retail clients will face any costs exposure at ...

Access to Placings for Individual Investors

Post Date: June 9, 2018

The FT, 7 June, publishes ShareSoc and the UK Shareholders' Association joint letter about placings which exclude individual investors. We continue to urge all companies and their brokers and Nomads to allow individual shareholders to participate in placings. The letter focussed on the recent placing by UKGI of RBS shares and was written by Cliff Weight and Peter Parry. It said: It is a public disgrace that individual investors have been excluded from the placing by UK Government Investments Limited ("UKGI") of RBS ...

BEIS Consultation on Insolvency and Corporate Governance

Post Date: June 8, 2018

We have submitted jointly with the UK Shareholders Association our response to the consultation on Insolvency and Corporate Governance. The response was written by Cliff Weight - Director, UK Individual Shareholders Society (ShareSoc) and Peter Parry - Policy Director, UK Shareholders' Association. Click here to read it.

ShareSoc and UKSA’s joint response to the BEIS Consultation on Insolvency and Corporate Governance

Post Date: June 5, 2018

ShareSoc and UKSA’s joint response to the BEIS Consultation on Insolvency and Corporate Governance. Click here for our response.

Act Now to Protect Your Assets!

Post Date: May 28, 2018

We hope that, by now, you have read about the threat to all your broker accounts, including ISAs and SIPPs, that the events at Beaufort Securities exposes, which has been widely reported in the press (e.g. see this article in the Sunday Telegraph: www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/05/26/fbi-sting-picasso-scam-collapse-beaufort-could-destroy-trust/ ). If not, please visit our campaign page for a full explanation. Now is the time for you to act, to protect your own interests and remove the threat that an administrator could raid your accounts to recover ...

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