Rensburg AIM VCT

Rensburg AIM VCT Merger Agreed

Today (27/11/2015) shareholders in Rensburg AIM VCT (RSB) agreed to merge their company with Unicorn AIM VCT in a unanimous show of hands vote. They also agreed the tender offer which was associated with the deal and those shareholders who submitted tenders will be paid in full. Proxy votes were about 92% in favour on both resolutions. This is a definitive snub to Bill Nixon  of Maven who attempted to disrupt these plans on the basis that he could make a more ...

Rensburg AIM VCT AGM and Blinkx AGM

Did the directors postpone the Rensburg AIM VCT AGM, originally scheduled for the 22nd July, as they knew the votes? And even more importantly, what is the future for AIM VCTs? These were some of the questions that arose at the Rensburg AIM VCT AGM yesterday (on the 25th August). No answer was obtained to the first question, but there was coverage of the second question which may interest anyone who invests in VCTs. All the resolutions were passed, but all three ...

National Grid AGM, Rensburg AIM VCT and Stocktrade

I attended the National Grid Annual General Meeting in Birmingham yesterday. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to ask a question as the organisation that I was representing as a proxy put my son's name on it rather than mine so I was only allowed in as a "guest". It was not a particularly exciting event this year. Not a single shareholder complained about the outrageously high pay of the executive directors. The Chairman was both dogmatic and condescending to the mainly ...

VCT/EIS Changes and Rensburg AIM VCT

The Summer Budget announced changes to the qualifying investments for Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) and EIS investments. Some of changes and their impact were not immediately apparent but have come to light since. The rules will effectively be tightened to keep them focussed on early stage companies. For example for VCTs the investee companies will need to have been trading less than 10 years (or 7 years if they are not "knowledge intensive" businesses) and management buy-outs will be discouraged. The details ...

Defeating Shareholder Democracy at Alliance Trust et al

The existing shareholding arrangements in public companies, with many investors in nominee accounts, now effectively frustrate shareholder democracy. Alternatively they make it either very difficult in practice, or enormously expensive. Let's look at a couple of examples where ShareSoc has some recent experience of requesting share registers - Alliance Trust and Rensburg AIM VCT. In terms of the size of the company and numbers of shareholders Alliance Trust is one of the larger public companies. It has recently come under attack from ...

Rensburg AIM VCT About Face on Wind-Up

Rensburg AIM VCT Plc have today (18/6/2015) announced that the circular giving details of the previously proposed wind-up of the company has been put on hold. They state that the previous announcements have "......acted as a catalyst to generate interest in the Company and several of the parties with whom the Board had held previous discussions have approached the Board with proposals which might prove to be more attractive than before". Maven Capital Partners, who had written to shareholders, is not ...

Rensburg AIM VCT Wind-up covered in the FT

There was an interesting article in the FTMoney edition yesterday (6/6/2015) on the proposed wind up of Rensburg AIM VCT Plc. The board of directors are pushing ahead with this proposal and a General Meeting to approve it is scheduled with the AGM on the 22nd July. The FT article by Adam Palin points out that anyone who claimed capital gains roll-over relief on their original investment in the VCT may not wish to support the wind-up. It quotes me (as a ...

Rensburg AIM VCT Wind Up

Shareholders on the register of Rensburg AIM VCT will have received a letter from Bill Nixon of Maven Capital Partners. Maven are an experienced Venture Capital Fund manager and have experience of taking over the management of existing VCTs as the letter indicates. They are proposing to take over the management of the Rensburg AIM VCT instead of the company winding up as the board of directors has proposed. The company has previously announced that they propose to formally wind up via ...