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Redcentric Shareholders to Get Their Day in Court

Post Date: October 10, 2021

This article represents the views of its author, not necessarily those of ShareSoc. Four years after defects in the published accounts of Redcentric plc (RCN) came to light, a trial of those accused of false accounting and other offences is finally to take place. Law360 reports: ...Fraser Fisher, former chief executive of Redcentric PLC, and the company's ex-chief financial officer, Timothy Coleman, denied charges that they had falsified financial documents and lied to an auditor between 2015 and 2016 when they appeared at ...

City of London Investment Trust Annual Report

Post Date: October 4, 2021

I have been reading the City of London Investment Trust (CTY) annual report in advance of their AGM on the 28th of October. This is one of my oldest shareholdings – first purchased in 2011 with an annual total return since of 11.5% p.a. according to Sharescope. Historically it has been a good performer, if somewhat boring. That’s OK but last year was a disappointing one. Has Job Curtis, the long-time manager, lost his touch? Last year the trust supplied a share ...

ShareSoc Woodford Legal Claim Webinar

Post Date: October 3, 2021

Former ShareSoc Chair Roger Lawson attended the Woodford Webinar and gives his view below. I watched the ShareSoc webinar last night covering the legal claims over the collapse of the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF). I never personally held any of the Woodford funds but from past experience of other similar big legal claims it was of some interest. With as many as 270,000 investors in WEIF affected it must be one of the most discreditable events in the financial world in ...

Grant Thornton Fined Trivial Amount over Patisserie Valerie Audits

Post Date: September 27, 2021

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. The interesting news today, at least for a former shareholder in Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) as I am, was the announcement by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) of fines on Grant Thornton and their Audit Partner over the defective audits of the company in financial years 2015, 2016 and 2017. The company subsequently collapsed in 2018 when it became apparent that the accounts were a work of fiction. This is ...

Dividend Yield vs Market Capitalisation

Post Date: September 25, 2021

This article expresses the opinions and analysis of its author and does not necessarily reflect those of ShareSoc. The author accepts no liability for any errors in his analysis - readers should verify the analysis for themselves. There has recently been some discussion within ShareSoc and SIGnet about the construction of the SIGnet Investors' Index (SII). A point of debate was whether the SII was biased relative to more conventional and total return indexes because its small- and micro-cap weighting did not ...