Shareholder Democracy

New Year Resolutions? How About a New Resolution at RBS?

One of ShareSoc's recent initiatives has been the promotion of the concept of Shareholder Committees as a way of improving corporate governance in public companies. To pursue this agenda we have today submitted a requisition for a resolution to be added to the Annual General Meeting of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). A summary of what it said is given below (the full press release is here: https://www.sharesoc.org/pr85-rbs-shareholder-committee.html ): RBS Shareholders Demand Shareholder Committee (A joint press release on behalf of Private ...

Fenner AGM Requisition. Why Is It Not a Good Idea?

Fenner Plc (FENR) are the subject of a requisition of a resolution to appoint another director at their forthcoming Annual General Meeting on 11th January. ShareSoc is particularly interested in requisitioned resolutions at present because we are trying to get one added to the Royal Bank of Scotland AGM (see www.sharesoc.org/campaigns/rbs/). In the case of Fenner, activist Swiss investor Teleios Capital Partners have put forward the requisition, with the support of a number of other investors. Teleios hold over 5% and have ...

Shareholder Rights Directive Agreed – But It’s Still Defective

There has been agreement within the EU on the final form of the Shareholder Rights Directive. What follows is the press release issued by Better Finance (a body that represents individual investors across the EU and of which ShareSoc is a Member). PRESS RELEASE PRESIDENCY AND PARLIAMENT AGREE ON REVIEW OF SHAREHOLDERS RIGHTS DIRECTIVE: LIMITED IMPROVEMENTS FOR SHAREHOLDERS 14 December 2016 - On 9 December 2016 the EU presidency and the EU Parliament agreed on the final version of the new Shareholders ...

IDOX and Prejudicial Placings

One of the things that private investors hate is placings made by companies to raise money in which they cannot participate. In other words, the issuance of shares that dilutes your interest in the company when it is not a rights issue and there is no "open offer" alongside. Sometimes those placings are done at a price which is a considerable discount to the open market share price, thus enabling institutional investors to pick up shares at a big discount to ...

Campaign to Obtain Shareholder Committee at RBS

This note has been issued by ShareSoc to its Members (but anyone can join in to support the campaign): ShareSoc has advocated the implementation of Shareholder Committees since our...

Inconvenient AGM Times – Proactis

Yet another example of an inconvenient date/time for an AGM is Proactis Holdings (PHD) - see previous blog posts covering the same issue at Dunelm and DX Group. Proactis have called their Annual General Meeting for 9.30 am on the 19th December in Wetherby (Yorkshire). That is a Monday morning of the week before Christmas to begin with, and the time makes it very difficult for most investors to make it without staying overnight. Wetherby may be an acceptable location, but a time ...

Some Interesting Meetings – Palace Capital, Dunelm, NCC

There are some interesting meetings in prospect for investors. Firstly, I notice Simon Thompson has tipped Palace Capital (PCA) in this week’s Investors Chronicle. He suggests this property investment...

More Power Requested for Ultimate Investors

ShareSoc has issued a press release noting our submission to the Parliament BIS Committee Inquiry into Corporate Governance. It requests more power for ultimate investors. Here is a brief summary of the contents (the press release includes a link to our full submission). We suggest that the goal should be to get more power back to the ultimate investors. This can be achieved by: - Ensuring that individual shareholders can exercise their rights, even if their shares are held in nominee accounts. - Providing ...

Foresight 4 VCT Announce Board and Other Changes

Following a campaign by some shareholders in Foresight 4 VCT Plc (FTF) supported by ShareSoc (see www.sharesoc.org/campaigns/foresight-4-vct/) which resulted in the directors only narrowly managing to get re-elected at the recent AGM, the company has now responded with a major announcement. The proposed changes are: Chairman Philip Stephens and Director Peter Dicks indicate they intend to retire from the board. A specialist recruitment firm is being engaged to identify suitable candidates to replace them (this was one of the suggestions that ...

Foresight 4 VCT AGM Result

At the Annual General Meeting of Foresight 4 VCT today, all three board directors only very narrowly managed to get re-elected – with 50.01% voting FOR Chairman Philip Stephens,...

Restoring Responsible Ownership

"Restoring Responsible Ownership" is the title of a paper published today by Chris Philp, M.P., on the topic of "Ending the Ownerless Corporation and Controlling Executive Pay". Many people, including ShareSoc, have pointed out the problems in the current governance of public companies. Professor John Kay covered many of the issues in his admirable review of how the stock market operates in his Kay Review a few years ago. One of the symptoms has been rapidly rising director pay as institutions ...

Pay of FTSE-100 CEOs, and Berkeley Group

The High Pay Centre have just published their latest analysis of the pay of FTSE-100 CEOs. Their average pay is now £5.5 million and it grew by over 10% from the previous year. Stefan Stern of the High Pay Centre said "There is apparently no end yet in sight to the rise and rise of FTSE100 CEO pay packages. In spite of the occasional flurry from more active shareholders, boards continue to award ever larger amounts of pay to their most senior ...