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Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) Retail Shareholder Event 14 June 2019

Post Date: June 21, 2019

Carla Antunes da Silva, Executive Committee member and Group Strategy, Corporate Ventures and Investors Relations Director and Douglas Radcliffe, Group Investor Relations Director presented to 40 retail shareholders in a highly successful event organised by Lloyds and ShareSoc. After a detailed 45 minute presentation, Carla and Douglas answered questions for 30 minutes, followed by informal discussions and networking over a very pleasant buffet lunch on the 8th floor of the Lloyds head office in Gresham Street overlooking the London skyline. Copies of the presentation ...

Slack IPO, Web Privacy and Sell on Monday

Post Date: June 21, 2019

The IPO of Slack in the USA has received a lot of media coverage. This is one of those technology stocks that is on what at first glance is a sky-high valuation. Slack provides workplace collaboration software and last year had revenues of $400 million, and lost $140 million. The market cap is now around $20 billion which means it is valued at about 50 times revenue. Those are the negative numbers. The positive aspect is that it roughly doubled revenue ...

Woodford, FCA, Asset Management

Post Date: June 19, 2019

Today the FT reveals that the FCA have launched an investigation in the Woodford Equity Income Fund. Last night in the Evening Standard, Anthony Hilton estimated that only about 200,000 people were invested in Woodford funds, and added "so why all the fuss". I think it is about trust. Most people in the UK do not trust business. For example, it does not help public levels of trust when Woodford takes a £36m dividend (from Woodford Investment Management Limited year end March 2018 ...

VCT Investor Group – Ventus & Ventus 2 VCT Shareholder Resolutions

Post Date: June 18, 2019

Examples of egregious fee structures and of passive directors are to be found in many VCTs (Venture Capital Trusts). ShareSoc and its members campaign to try to rein in the worst offenders, see https://www.sharesoc.org/campaigns/vct-investors-group/ Our principal objectives are: To provide best practice guidelines on management fees, performance fees, directors’ tenure and independence. To provide advice for investors on specific VCTs by Identifying existing holders willing to work with others to share knowledge, to identify areas of concern and to make ...

Worldwide Healthcare Trust and Investor Voting

Post Date: June 16, 2019

I recently received the Annual Report of Worldwide Healthcare Trust (WWH). This is one of those companies that has stopped sending out proxy voting forms for their AGM. The Registrar is Link Asset Services who seem to be making it as difficult as possible for shareholders on the register to vote. You either have to contact them to request a proxy voting form, or register for their on-line portal. I don’t want to register (and the last time I tried it ...