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NWG NatWest Group – Company Information and Vote Guidance

by Cliff Weight, Director ShareSoc. These are my personal views and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. I own shares in NWG. ShareSoc has introduced a new added value service, for Full Members only, providing background information on leading companies and AGM vote guidance. Initially we are piloting this for FTSE30 companies, plus a few others in the FTSE100. You can access all the information that ShareSoc has written on a company by clicking on the Research and Company Research buttons in the header ...

Accessing Virtual Shareholder Meetings

It is an unfortunate feature of Covid regulations that many companies have used the waivers contained in those regs to avoid meeting with their shareholders at AGMs. It is therefore gratifying to see that some companies are at least making some effort to provide a virtual forum to meet investors. Two companies that I follow which have offered such forums are the RIT Capital Partners investment trust (RCP) and AstraZeneca (AZN). Unfortunately, however, there is a snag. RCP say: You will be able to ...

LSE London Stock Exchange – Company Information and Vote Guidance

by Cliff Weight, Director ShareSoc. These are my personal views and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. I do not own shares in LSE. ShareSoc has introduced a new added value service, for Full Members only, providing background information on leading companies and AGM vote guidance. Initially we are piloting this for FTSE30 companies, plus a few others in the FTSE100. You can access all the information that ShareSoc has written on a company by clicking on the Research and Company Research buttons in ...

Laggard DDDD – 4D Pharma placing with no Primary Bid individual offer

By Cliff Weight, ShareSoc Director. I hold shares in DDDD. I am not sure if I am happy or angry with 4D Pharma. Duncan Peyton (Chief Executive Officer) and Alex Stevenson (Chief Scientific Officer) have each subscribed £725,000 for shares in the placing, which in total raised £20m at a price of 110p. Their commitment and increased skin in the game is excellent and praiseworthy. The share price this morning is 118p. So those who invested at 110p have a modest gain of 7%. However ...

Laggard Long Serving Directors and Maven VCT

I have long complained about directors serving on boards for longer than 9 years. The UK Corporate Governance Code (which you can easily find on the web) says any director who serves for more than 9 years cannot be considered “independent” and there should be a majority of independent directors. When the UK Corporate Governance Code was drafted, this principle of avoiding long-serving directors was introduced and I consider it a very sound principle. But investment trusts (including Venture Capital Trusts) continue ...