Shareholder Rights

Mail, 14 March 2021, SUPERMAN and #sharesocuk Support Shareholder Rights.

It is good news that The Mail on Sunday MailOnline is supporting shareholders and shareholders rights. I get quoted.... Cliff Weight, director of investor campaign group ShareSoc, says wealth platforms make it so difficult for customers to engage that they are 'disenfranchising individual shareholders'. He says: 'Most platforms don't even pass on information and if you want to vote the method offered is practically prehistoric. As a result they're throwing away millions of shareholder votes.' Weight believes platform Interactive Investor is better than most. Eight per cent ...

CityAM, 28 Aug 2020, Share and Share Alike: Electronically?

CityAM article on modernising share ownership https://www.cityam.com/share-and-share-alike-electronically/ quotes Cliff Weight, director of ShareSoc, the individual shareholders’ campaigning group, [who] is likeminded, preferring dividends to be paid directly into his bank or share-trading platform account. He is similarly in favour of the move towards digital systems for paper share certificates, albeit with an important caveat. “An electronic system is needed, but it must pass on my ownership rights to vote and receive information – far too many trading platforms fail to pass on these ...

www.allinvestorsmatter.co.uk – Access to fund raises

Please sign the petition, asking issuers to include retail investors when issuing shares, if you have not already done so. See www.allinvestorsmatter.co.uk The petition already has over 1,000 signatures. Signatories include: Mark Northway, Chairman, ShareSoc Lord Lee of Trafford DL FCA House of Lords Adam McConkey, Chairman, Quoted Companies Alliance Sarah Wilson, CEO, Minerva Analytics Ltd Andy Bell, Founder & CEO AJ Bell Peter Hargreaves, Founder Hargreaves Lansdown Paul Killik, Senior Executive Officer, Killik & Co Gavin Oldham OBE, Chairman Share plc/The Share Centre  ...

Daily Mail, 7 March 2020, Small shareholders set for power boost

Small shareholders set for power boost as shake-up may give ... This is Money, 7 Mar 2020: ...Cliff Weight, a director at ShareSoc, another group representing small investors, said: ‘Low rates of voting by individual investors mean opportunists can overly influence takeovers.’...

ShareSoc-UKSA Response: Law Commission Review of Intermediated Securities – Call for Evidence

ShareSoc-UKSA submitted a joint response on behalf of individual investors, on 5 Nov 2019. The key points we made were: Communication by email rather than by post is now the norm and assumed as the default position. Printing annual reports and shareholder circulars and sending them to shareholders by post is no longer necessary. Postage and printing costs were some of the key drivers of the nominee system. A modern system of intermediated securities should embrace and recognise modern technology and ensure ...

Law Commission Error on Segregated Accounts

In a previous blog post on the Law Commission’s consultation on Intermediated Securities I queried their claim that all investors in nominee accounts had the option to use a...

Shareholder Rights Being Eroded

There is a good article in the Financial Times today (Saturday 22/6/2019) which is headlined “UK shareholder rights being eroded”. As the article says, almost no investors who buy shares legally own the shares they have bought, which rather surprises them. That’s because most of them buy via nominee accounts operated by stockbrokers and platforms. Not only that, but most nominee accounts are “pooled” accounts so even identifying who are the “beneficial owners” is not always easy. Does it matter? Yes it ...

Shareholder Rights and Nominee accounts – Update and letter to BEIS

Our relationships with key opinion formers continue to grow. Peter Parry, Mike Dennis, Mark Bentley and I had a very useful meeting with BEIS on 8 Jan and at their request I have written explaining why the Minister should now act on the nominee account issue. A copy of my letter of 18 Feb is below. (The reason for the long delay in writing this letter was due to illness. It was delayed due my trip to Cambodia and Vietnam, and then ...

Protect your rights, act now!

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to regain the rights and protections that you have lost as a result of the nominee account system. I urge you to act now by raising this issue at AGMs and writing to your MP, as suggested below. Probably the most important ShareSoc campaign is the Shareholder Rights campaign, launched in October 2014 to gain full rights for ALL shareholders. Individual shareholder rights have been eroded, particularly by the nominee account mechanism and the way that platforms and ...

Shareholder Rights

Probably the most important ShareSoc campaign is the Shareholder Rights campaign, launched in October 2014 to get full rights to ALL shareholders. Individual shareholder rights have been eroded, particularly by the nominee account process and the way that platforms, registrars and brokers fail to provide a good service to individual investors. Often, individual investors do not get informed when a general meeting is going to happen, and do not receive circulars, voting forms and annual reports. And many platforms make it difficult ...