HL

The Vultures are Circling – Woodford, Carpetright et al

With the demise of the Neil Woodford’s empire and the winding up of the Woodford Equity Income Fund, investors are looking for whom to blame – other than themselves...

Woodford and Hargreaves Lansdown

To follow up on my previous blog post over the collapse of Woodford Investment Management and how to avoid dud managers, the focus has now turned in the national...

Brexit Bounce, Green Accreditation, Security Issues and Hargreaves Lansdown AGM

The FTSE and my portfolio jumped up this morning (11th October) on the hope of a Brexit Agreement after all. RBS is up 16% which seems to be a...

Evening Standard, 8 August 2019, Hargreaves Lansdown Chiefs get £200m Dividend

ShareSoc's chairman raises a quizzical eyebrow in this article: https://www.standard.co.uk/business/hargreaves-lansdown-chiefs-get-200m-dividend-despite-woodford-saga-a4208651.html

Woodford, FCA, Asset Management

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 ...

FT, 18 June 2019 – Critics call on Hargreaves to reveal executive’s Woodford stakes

“This is not caught by law, but it is certainly caught by moral imperative,” said Mark Northway, chairman at shareholder rights’ group ShareSoc. “Given [Mr Dampier’s] position in the eye of the storm, transparency is the only policy available to him.... https://www.ft.com/content/fc6cf624-9113-11e9-b7ea-60e35ef678d2  

IPOs, Platforms, Growth Stocks and Shareholder Rights

I agreed with FT writer Neil Collins in a previous article when discussing the prospective IPO of Aston Martin (AML) – “never buy a share in an initial public offering” he suggested because those who are selling know more about the stock than you do. We were certainly right about that company because the share price is now 24% below the IPO price. Smithson Investment Trust (SSON) did rather better on its first day of trading on Friday, moving to a 2% premium. ...

Hargreaves Lansdown and Fund Charges

Phil Oakley of Sharescope wrote a good piece on Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) in his weekly roundup published on 16th February. Why are they so profitable a business when, as Terry Smith said, they seem to be in essence a “distributor” operating in a highly competitive field with few barriers to entry? The answer, apart from their high-quality customer service, is the level of charges they make on investment in funds (unit trusts and OEICS, not investment trusts which are treated as ...