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FCA, AFMs, ACDs, High fees for inappropriate products, Closet indexers

Post Date: July 8, 2021

By Cliff Weight, Director, ShareSoc. These are my personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of ShareSoc. The FCA has published two reports in a week that highlight the historic failings of the fund management industry and are hugely critical. According to Wealth Manager "In a damning report, the watchdog said fund houses have failed to properly assess the value of their funds." see https://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/news/asset-managers-can-t-explain-why-funds-offer-value-fca-says/a1527497 It is a good report with many sensible suggestions. It should have been done 5 years ago immediately ...

Platform Transfer Finally Completed and Pointless Trust Changes

Post Date: June 22, 2021

Good News! A transfer of one of my SIPPs from one platform to another has finally been completed today (22nd June). I initiated the transfer on the 12th January this year so this has actually taken over 5 months. A totally unreasonable period of time for what should have been a simple transfer of cash and a few direct shareholdings of UK listed crest stocks. However their failure to collect the tax refunds on PID dividends on some of the holdings ...

Palantir: The Next Tesla, or a Financial Black Hole?

Post Date: June 17, 2021

This is a guest article by Tim Sunderland, founder of Mitto Markets. The views expressed in the article are those of the author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. The Tesla Comparison Admittedly, the timing isn’t ideal when comparing Palantir to a company whose Commander-in-Chief (or Technoking as his official job title states) is pumping out Crypto tips not even the Salvation Army would take in. But despite Elon’s quasi-Twitter-God-like status wearing thin with even his most faithful acolytes, let’s not forget that Tesla’s ...

How Wealthy Americans Pay No Tax

Post Date: June 15, 2021

This article expresses the personal views of its author, not necessarily those of ShareSoc. There was another article in the Financial Times today covering “How the wealthiest Americans get away with paying no tax”. The item was based on a report by ProPublica which suggested that America’s richest billionaires paid virtually no taxes on hundreds of billions of dollars of added wealth over the past decade. They only paid 3.4% of the increase in taxes. The report is based on leaked IRS ...

ShareSoc Patron Lord Lee Parliamentary Question about Bacanora take-over

Post Date: June 11, 2021

The background is that ShareSoc was approached by the Bacanora Lithium Shareholder Action Group which is being run by Dee Patel who asked for ShareSoc’s assistance. We have helped them in explaining some key issues in how to run a campaign, how to obtain the shareholder register, problems with voting nominee shares, etc. We also thought whether a takeover would be in the UK public interest issue. We drew this to the attention of ShareSoc Patron Lord Lee, who has now tabled ...