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Ocado Placing Does Not Respect Shareholder Rights?

Post Date: June 11, 2020

Under the Companies Act 2006, pre-emption rights allow existing shareholders the ‘right of first refusal’ when new shares are issued. According to 561(1) of the 2006 Act, shares cannot be offered to another person until an offer has been made (on the same or more favourable terms) to each existing shareholder, and any time limit given for the offer has expired. At its core, this enables such individuals to protect their existing shareholding against further dilution of their shares – but typically ...

AGM – scope for change

Post Date: June 11, 2020

There is an excellent FT article on AGMs https://www.ft.com/content/1209fa2f-30a9-4a16-bcee-65743814acc2 (11 June 2020) which quotes me in some detail: Cliff Weight, from the individual shareholders group ShareSoc, says he is concerned that some companies see AGMs as a “waste of time and unnecessary, apart from the formalities” required by law. He fears some will use the disruption caused by the pandemic to rubber stamp bad practices, such as by making it harder for investors to question the board. ShareSoc believes a move towards live AGM ...

Babcock Price Fall, Segro Placing, TR Property

Post Date: June 10, 2020

I said in a previous blog post “that I tend to avoid FTSE-100 companies as their share prices are driven by professional analysts’ comments, by geo-political concerns, by general economic trends and by commodity prices. You can buy a FTSE-100 company and soon find it’s going downhill because one influential analyst has decided its prospects are not as they previously thought”. Indeed that is exactly what happened after I made a recent purchase of Babcock International (BAB). Soon after, Shore Capital Markets ...

Market Trends, Big Miners and Will the Music Stop?

Post Date: June 5, 2020

Stock markets continue to rise. They seem to be ignoring the bad company results that are going to come out in the next few months. Although there are signs that the Covid-19 epidemic is weakening, some sectors such as hospitality are going to be in lock-down for some time. The economy is clearly going into recession with many employees being laid off. The lack of consumer spending, not just because some people have less money to spend, but because others are ...

More on Placings – AVACTA

Post Date: June 4, 2020

AVACTA (AVCT) has seen its share price rise from 100p on May 13 to 200p and then decline to 140p. I feel sorry for those investors who bought at around 200p. The sharp decline in the share price (20p on Tuesday and 20p on Wednesday) could be evidence that this deal has leaked. Source: Interactive Investor The £25m placing price is 120p, so the fact that the share price is staying stable today at 140p (at 09.48 as I write) suggests, in my opinion, ...