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.
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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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Investors now know that when your stockbroker goes into administration, your assets are not secure (or “ring fenced” as your contract with them often says) because they can be seized under the Special Administration Regulations by the administrator to pay their costs. This has become clear from the Beaufort case. That means many investors are facing losses because Beaufort client accounts, like most stockbroking accounts now, were nominee accounts with the shares registered in the name of Beaufort.
There are two possible ...
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.
The Government is selling off another tranche of its holding in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). By selling another 8% it will reduce its holding to 62% of the company. The Government (or “taxpayers” as some described them) will face a loss of about £2 billion on what it originally paid for the shares. There were howls of protest from some politicians. John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, said “There is no economic justification for this sell-off of RBS shares. There should ...
ShareSoc and UKSA’s joint response to the BEIS Consultation on Insolvency and Corporate Governance. Click here for our response.
In addition to the review of Inheritance Tax previously covered, the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) are also undertaking a review of ways to simplify the taxation of income from interest on savings and dividends. Although 95% of the population pay no tax on such income as they have relatively little, the complexities of calculating the tax due on those with higher levels are mind boggling. Here’s a couple of quotations from the OTS Report (see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/simplifying-the-taxation-of-savings-income ) which explain why:
Many ...
I commented previously on the conviction of former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain for fraud in relation to the accounts of Autonomy Plc (see https://www.sharesoc.org/blog/regulations-and-law/they-do-things-differently-in-the-usa/ ). Just to show that this was not solely a case prompted by Hewlett Packard over their disastrous acquisition of the company, supported by a partisan California court as some have alleged, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) have now announced formal complaints over the conduct of auditors Deloittes and senior finance staff of Autonomy – including Mr ...
The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) have published two items that will be of interest to investors. Firstly they have called for evidence to support a review of Inheritance Tax (IHT) and secondly a note on “routes to simplification” of the taxation of savings income. The latter is horribly complex so I will deal with that later in a separate post.
Inheritance tax is slightly less complex but since recent Chancellors decided to use it as a sop to the middle classes ...
