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They Do Things Differently in the USA

Former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain has been found guilty of 16 counts of fraud in a Federal Court in California. He was convicted on all 16 counts of wire and securities fraud. This case was based on allegations of false accounting to ramp up the value of the Autonomy business prior to its acquisition by Hewlett-Packard. The latter subsequently wrote down most of the $10.3 billion cost of that acquisition. More background on this case is given in a previous blog post ...

Beaufort Administration, Intercede and the Mello Conference

Yesterday I attended the first day of the 2-day Mello investor conference in Derby. There were lots of good presentations and some interesting companies to talk to. One hot topic of conversation was the collapse of Beaufort which was forced into administration (see two previous blog posts on the topic for details). There are apparently many people affected by it. There are a number of major issues that have arisen here: The administrators (PWC) have suggested it might cost as much as ...

Persimmon 2018 AGM Voting Recommendations

We (Peter Parry of UKSA and I) met the interim Chairman Nigel Mills and the Rem Com Chair Marion Sears on 19 April. This was part of the Persimmon charm offensive to try and minimise the negative impact of the  2012 LTIP which is due to pay out massively. Nigel and Marion were not responsible for the 2012 LTIP. That was done before they joined Persimmon. Those responsible have resigned and Nigel and Marion are trying to make the best of an ...

The Departure of Sir Martin Sorrell

At last the highest paid and longest serving FTSE-100 CEO has departed from WPP after 33 years. His total pay last year was £48 million, down from the previous year’s “single figure” of £70 million. Sir Martin was certainly perceived to be a “star” businessman, and the financial performance of WPP pleased shareholders for many years. Despite recent problems the Annual Report of the company claims a Total Shareholder Return of 1,006% over the last twenty years as against a measly ...

It is this weekend – ShareSoc will be at the UK’s biggest shares show UK Investor on April 21 – will you? Free tickets on offer

This Saturday 21st April ShareSoc will be mixing with more than 3,000 serious investors at the UK Investor Show. And we have some of the last available tickets to hand out today, for free, to ShareSoc members Sharesoc will be organising one of 133 stands at the country's largest one day event for those interested in shares. The other stands will be manned by AIM and Standard List companies and the CEOs of most of them will also be doing 20 minute ...