Shareholder Democracy

Rio Tinto and Climate Change: Not just an NGO issue

For the AGM of Rio Tinto Ltd in Australia in May, a shareholder resolution has been tabled to: request that the company, in subsequent annual reporting, disclose short, medium...

Brexit and Why Shareholder Votes Matter

Last night Brexit got done. We exited the EU after 47 years. But we will need to resume the conversation to secure a trade deal. That still leaves room...

Shareholder Rights: Positive noises from Law Commission re nominees and Sirius problems

Our most important campaign is Shareholder Rights which relates to the current problems with nominee accounts. This is so important because it impacts all our other campaigns and work...

Retail Shareholder Participation in Voting – US study

Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director reviews Retail Shareholder Participation in the Proxy Process: Monitoring, Engagement, and Voting: Working Paper N° 637/2019 November 2019: By Alon Brav, Matthew D. Cain, Jonathon Zytnick This...

Law Commission Error on Segregated Accounts

In a previous blog post on the Law Commission’s consultation on Intermediated Securities I queried their claim that all investors in nominee accounts had the option to use a...

Deferred Shares Report and Voting Trends Survey

Study shows low adoption of deferred share plans Tom Gosling, Partner, PwC | Executive Fellow, London Business School | Steering Committee Member, Purposeful Company Taskforce has written a good...

Albion Venture Capital VCT (AAVC) AGM Result and Actions

30% of shareholders opposed the increase in fees at the AAVC AGM. This is a remarkable result and sends a strong signal to the directors that they need to better engage with their shareholders. I think the % voting against would have been higher if: we had started our campaign earlier we had received the shareholder register earlier we had been able to get in touch with all shareholders prior to the AGM the directors had not sent out a letter to ...

Voting Problems, Computershare, Albion Venture Capital and PLAIN ENGLISH.

By Cliff Weight Computershare have refused to accept a vote instruction for the Albion Venture Capital AGM, because it was sent to them electronically. It was signed, scanned and sent to them by email. They say that the meeting notice says what form the instruction must be sent and this overrides the Companies Act, CA2006 S333. The notice says the instruction must be sent to Computershare, but does not say how (see below for the precise wording used). In this modern age, surely ...

Albion Venture Capital Trust PLC and Ventus funds

The Albion Venture Capital AGM is on Wed 21 Aug. Cliff Weight, Mark Lauber, Tim Grattan and others will be attending and asking questions. I finally received the Albion Venture Capital register on 16 August 2019. However, Albion Venture Capital VCT Chair Richard Glover wrote to all 5,300 shareholders on 15 August. Many were sent emails but the copy of the register we were given did not have email addresses, so we were unable to email shareholders. In the time available ...

Ventus and Ventus 2 VCTs– obstacles to a level playing field in unseating directors

By Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director I was pleased to see the highly respected and influential Investors Chronicle taking an interest in and writing a balance article on the Ventus funds, see https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/comment/2019/07/18/limits-of-influence/ The IC seems to think ShareSoc is leading and driving the campaign, whereas the campaign leader is Nick Curtis, but other than this point I think it is a very good article. What is becoming apparent is how extremely difficult it is to unseat directors, because the playing field is tilted so ...