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Grenfell: Lessons for the Investment Community

Post Date: July 2, 2017

The Grenfell Tower disaster shocked and saddened the whole of the UK. It leaves questions about how such a tragic series of failings, which led to the disaster, were allowed to happen. It is to be hoped that the forthcoming public enquiry will shed some light on this. A recent article in the Financial Times, however, may offer some clues. And I believe that some of the failings have parallels that the financial services industry could learn from. The article reports that building ...

Enormous Management Fees at British Smaller Companies VCT

Post Date: June 28, 2017

British Smaller Companies VCT (BSV) has been one of the more successful Venture Capital Trusts in terms of fund performance – it is managed by YFM. The NAV Total Return has been 106.9 over the last ten years according to the AIC (i.e. investors have doubled their money), beating the sector performance for generalist VCTs of only 64. With high, tax-free dividends being paid, investors have probably been happy. But back in 2009 the managers performance incentive fee was changed to be ...

Levelling the Playing Field

Post Date: June 27, 2017

One of ShareSoc's objects is "to ensure equal treatment for all shareholders". We are therefore rather disappointed when, as happens all too frequently, companies issue announcements like the one from Crest Nicholson today: http://www.investegate.co.uk/crest-nicholson-hdgs--crst-/rns/analyst---investor-day/201706270700022028J/ The announcement was issued at 7am this morning and announces an event for analysts and investors taking place on the same day. It is clear that this event is not open to ordinary individual shareholders. Selected analysts and favoured institutional shareholders will undoubtedly have been invited well in advance. ...

In Memoriam, The ShareSoc Web Site Replaced

Post Date: June 21, 2017

Just a few words to welcome the new ShareSoc web site - still at www.sharesoc.org of course. The old one was basically knocked up by me using the Serif WebPlus software in a few days when ShareSoc was first founded at the end of 2010 and it has lasted a lot longer than could reasonably have been expected. Although quite a lot of content was added over the years, the structure and functionality remained pretty much unchanged. So it was certainly time for ...

How To Make Money on Losers, and the Monitise Bid

Post Date: June 15, 2017

After the takeover bid was announced yesterday for Monitise (MONI) at 2.9p per share (valuing the business at £70m when it was once worth £1 billion, I thought I...