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The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement – What’s in it for investors?

Post Date: December 6, 2013

You may well be worse off if you are dead. The Government is to clamp down on the payment of state pensions to people who are dead, which is apparently a particular problem when they move overseas upon retirement.Otherwise these are come of the changes and how they may affect individual investors:- As expected, there is to be a restriction on Venture Capital Trust (VCT) "enhanced share buy-backs" upon which there was a recent consultation. In future VCT investments that are ...

Hibu, a most peculiar EGM, and RBS

Post Date: December 5, 2013

In a previous blog post on the 28th Nov I discussed Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the "unacceptable face of banking". It mentioned the case of HIBU, where RBS was one of the lenders, which had just been put into administration thereby apparently thwarting the calling of a General Meeting (EGM) by shareholders and the appointment of new directors. This was similar to the case of Torex retail some years before. In fact the HIBU EGM did actually take place but ...

FCA Consultation on Crowdfunding

Post Date: December 2, 2013

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is consulting on a new regulatory approach to cover "crowdfunding". Crowdfunding is in essence a direct approach to investors for either equity investments in early stage companies, or loans to similar companies. It has become popular of late due to the emergence of various web-based platforms to collate the interests of many small investors, but can also be employed by companies to make direct approaches to investors. ShareSoc looked at one of the latter examples (Clear ...

How many corporate jets does Tesco need?

Post Date: December 1, 2013

How many corporate jets does Tesco need? Four is the answer apparently. Every little helps (sic) as is their motto no doubt. The cost of these aircraft has actually risen in recent years and the expenditure on them was £8.9m last year. In addition the company has established a new "corporate" office in the West End of London for meetings rather than have directors travel to Cheshunt (that's just north of London for those who don't know). One has to ask whether they have ...

Are AIM tech company directors underpaid?

Post Date: November 29, 2013

Grant Thornton have published a report which says that AIM technology company directors do not pay themselves as much as in other AIM companies. Author Amanda Flint suggests the former might feel themselves undervalued and move elsewhere.According to the report, the average total pay package for AIM technology company chief executives was £383,000 last year. That is less than half the average pay across all sectors. And only 36% of technology CEOs received share-based awards compared with 60% of main market ...