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ADVFN Results and More on Lloyds

Post Date: October 24, 2017

ADVFN Plc (AFN) published their results for the year to June yesterday. I have a very small holding in the company (acquired for reasons I won’t go into). ADVFN are information providers on the stock market, primarily to private investors. Many people monitor their bulletin boards although like many such boards frequented by private investors, they are somewhat of a curate’s egg so far as serious or sophisticated investors are concerned. But they certainly have a large following – they say they ...

Lloyds Litigation, Collective Redress, and CLIG AGM

Post Date: October 23, 2017

I went to the High Court in London this morning to hear the grilling of witnesses in the case brought by shareholders over the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds. But I was disappointed to find when I got there that the first session was to be held in private – presumably the judge wants to discuss some legal issues with counsel for both sides. So I went to the AGM of City of London Investment Group (CLIG) instead where I hold ...

Rbs Snub to Chris Philp MP and Next Steps

Post Date: October 21, 2017

Gavin Palmer was at the Tory Party Conference and in discussion with Chris Philp, MP, where it emerged that Chris had written three times to RBS asking Sir Howard Davies, RBS Chairman why they were objecting to our shareholder resolution for a Shareholder Committee. Regular readers will be aware that it was Chris who wrote an excellent paper covering Shareholder Committees in September 2016 which received wide publicity. See http://highpaycentre.org/files/HPC_42_WEB_amend_-_Restoring_Responsible_Ownership.pdf Despite Chris’ best efforts, RBS rebuffed his questions and refused to share their legal ...

ShareSoc and the GDPR: help wanted!

Post Date: October 20, 2017

As the director with responsibility for ShareSoc's IT systems, our board has asked me to look into the implications for ShareSoc of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This regulation comes into force in May 2018, and there are severe penalties for non-compliance. GDPR completely overhauls the current Data Protection Act. I have had a preliminary look at the requirements for compliance and they seem rather onerous, even for a small organisation like ShareSoc. Considerable work is required to audit, document ...

Interesting AGMs, or not – Rosslyn and Dunelm

Post Date: October 19, 2017

This morning I attended the AGM of Rosslyn Data Technologies (RDT) for the first time. I picked up some shares in a deeply discounted placing that qualified for EIS relief a few months back. One has limited time to research a company on offer when a placing comes up. It looked sound enough at the time although the historic financials did not impress. Prospects looked better after an acquisition although this company has been around a long time without becoming a ...