Blogs

Latest Blogs

UK Population Growth – The Implications for Investors

Post Date: November 5, 2015

A few days ago, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published their projections for UK population numbers. The projected changes have really important implications for stock market investors. The ONS forecast that residents will grow to 70 million in the next 12 years from 65 million at present (that's an increase equivalent to the size of the Irish Republic). The increase is primarily being driven by immigration and a lot of the rise is expected to be in the South-East of ...

Globo In Administration

Post Date: November 3, 2015

There has been a further announcement by the company today which stated that administrators have been appointed "by order of the court". The administrators are FTI Consulting LLP and they say "Our focus is to undertake an immediate assessment of the Group in order to evaluate any opportunities to realise value from the various businesses. We will also be looking to gain control of the books and records in order to be in a position to undertake a full investigation. These steps ...

Alliance Trust Investor Forum Report

Post Date: November 3, 2015

Yesterday I attended the Investor Forum held by Alliance Trust in London. There were about 350 attendees with the usual audience of investment trust shareholders, many of whom had held the shares for a very long time from talking to a few of them. I pick out below some of the highlights (a full report of the meeting will be distributed to those who have registered for the Alliance Trust Shareholder Action Group (ATSAG - see https://www.sharesoc.org/alliance.html ). Chairperson Karin Forseke covered ...

Identity Theft – Experian, TalkTalk and Optimal Payments

Post Date: October 30, 2015

There have been a spate of cases of digital identity theft or breaches of security from UK listed companies of late. Their shares prices have all been affected to a greater or lesser extent. On the 2nd October, Experian (EXPN) reported that 15 million US consumers who had applied for T-Mobile services had been the subject of theft of their personal information. T-Mobile is reviewing its relationship with the company, but the share price only suffered a temporary setback even though the ...

Globo – the Last Straw

Post Date: October 26, 2015

Subsequent to my last blog post which covered the attack by Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) on Globo, this morning the company has made three further announcements: After an emergency board meeting, the CEO (Costis Papadimitrakopoulos), and the CFO (Dimitris Gryparis) have resigned and the COO has been suspended. A committee of non-executive directors has taken over after "certain matters regarding the falsification of data and the misrepresentations of the Company's financial position" were brought to their attention. The joint corporate broker, ...