A New Shareholder Organisation to Represent Individual Investors in the UK

PRESS RELEASE 01 (14/02/2011)

The “UK Individual Shareholders Society”, or “ShareSoc”, has been formed to represent individual shareholders (i.e. private investors, rather than institutions). The reasons for doing this are as follows:

  1. There are millions of private shareholders in the UK. They are not adequately represented at present and as a result they have little influence, while other organisations across Europe have tens of thousands of members.
  2. We need an active body to campaign for the rights of shareholders and to represent their views forcefully to companies, to the Government, and to other institutions.
  3. We shall be organised in a new way, with professional rather than amateur management, and we shall be properly financed. Initially we shall be involved mainly with issues which affect direct shareholders.

Our main objectives are to improve the investment performance of members, and to increase their wealth, to promote financial education at all levels, to provide a good communications facility for investors and to ensure good corporate governance in companies. We will report on companies, particularly those where problems have arisen, and are likely to support shareholder action groups where appropriate.

The new Chairman of ShareSoc, Roger Lawson, had this to say: “It is clear from recent proposals to scrap the printing of Annual Reports by the FRC, and to ban all “execution only” trading by the European Commission, that we are still seeing ridiculous proposals being put forward by public bodies. They have little understanding of what individual shareholders want and constantly bow to the prejudices of institutional investors and the interests of other stakeholders in financial markets”.

ShareSoc is offering free membership to anyone with an interest in stock market investment. It costs nothing to join and to start to receive our newsletters.

Persons may register on-line (without obligation) at our web site at www.sharesoc.org which already contains a good summary of what we intend to offer members (but please bear in mind that the web site is still under development).

For further information, please contact:

Roger W. Lawson,
Chairman,
ShareSoc Telephone: 020-8467-2686
Email:
info@sharesoc.org

Note any members of the press who wish to receive a complimentary copy of our informative monthly newsletter should send a request to info@sharesoc.org . Our newsletters cover not just the affairs of our organisation but contain general financial news and commentary. An example of our past newsletters is available on our web site. You can also follow ShareSoc on Twitter from @ShareSocUK.

About the UK Individual Shareholders Society (ShareSoc)

ShareSoc represents and supports individual investors who invest in the UK stock markets (and who own as much as 30% of the shares in UK public companies in aggregate). We are a mutual association controlled by our members with “not-for-profit” articles and incorporated as a company limited by guarantee. The organisation is financed by member subscriptions, donations from supporters and by the services it provides to members. Associate Membership of ShareSoc is free and is open to everyone with an interest in stock market investment. More information on ShareSoc can be obtained from our web site at www.sharesoc.org .

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