ShareSoc is delighted to announce the appointment of Bob Pettigrew, Ram Sachdev, Vijay Tohani and Elliott Hughes as Non-Executive Directors. 

Background information on Rio Tinto and AGM vote guidance, ahead of the AGM on 4th April.

This resource is only available to Full ShareSoc and Premium (ShareSoc & SIGnet) members.

Background information on Astra Zeneca and AGM vote guidance, ahead of the AGM on 11th April.

This resource is only available to Full ShareSoc and Premium (ShareSoc & SIGnet) members.

Article highlighting that not all Woodford Investors will be getting any compensation from Link, because of the way Hargreaves Lansdown have decided to use it. If anyone sold holdings in the HL multi-manager funds after suspension they get nothing, but all current fund holders do get a share of the smidgeon allocated. 

Private Equity Funds' valuation processes for holdings to be inspected by FCA this year. It might ultimately have an effect on all those deep discounts that have been prevailing for so long.

More on the ongoing investigations into the scandal at Home REIT.

HOME REIT is halfway through its 'stabilisation plan' says new fund manager after 7 months in a very hot seat. That might mean more write downs, refinancing and bad news, but to be honest it can't get that much worse.  

Just when you didn't think it could get any worse... Whatever next in this extraordinary saga! The larger "crime", however, from investors' point of view was the purchase of one of the properties by Alvarium for £725,000 when the vendor had acquired it earlier in the same month for £420,000. Home REIT crystallised a 70% loss on the property when it was ultimately sold at auction, according to Investment Week.

Is Quilter about to follow SJP into the doghouse? These two analysts think not, but to be honest some of their logic is a bit iffy. No doubt we will all eventually find out if it’s just a rounding error or something substantive. 

St. James's Place is now in so much trouble, that some analysts think it’s a takeover target.

Oddly, the law doesn't require Nationwide to hold an approval vote for its bid for Virgin Money (formerly Northern Rock). It's a huge decision and normally proper governance for a listed company with shareholders would be to have one, but mutuals only have ‘members’. Nils Pratley discusses the complications that would ensue from the Takeover Panel if they hold an advisory vote. 

P.S. former Northern Rock Shareholders still argue they should have been subject to Takeover Rules in 2008 rather than sequestration by the government. 

Lord Lee, ShareSoc Patron, has his idea for some NatWest shares to be given to schools, given high praise. The gift of £5,000 shares per school (est. a mere £22m) would stimulate financial education, spur business understanding, entrepreneurialism etc. simply because only the students could decide what to do with the shares, dividends etc. 

The heads of defence companies Babcock and Airbus call on the UK government to increase defence spending, saying the Ukraine war has changed the world, and it is imperative that the UK boost its defence spending from 2% GDP to ensure the safety of NATO. 
 
Babcock shares have risen 72% in the last 12 months. 

UK retail sales were down 0.4% year on year in February, which was better than the 0.7% decline expected. 
 
However, on a monthly basis, sales stayed flat, beating an expected decline. Also, online sales registered the largest increase since July 2023. 
 
Does this mean the UK has turned a corner and is already out of recession? 

The Gilts market is changing and the Treasury is yet to realise that structural demand for long dated debt is rapidly falling, warns the Telegraph. Another avoidable crisis in the offing? 

Are TikTok Finfluencers starting to become useful? Hope so, given that more than half those users look for their financial advice there. Eek! 

MoneyWeek asks if it's time to dump Global Equity trackers? Pointing out that they are 3 x times more concentrated than in 2009, largely because large tech stocks now represent a huge portion of an index’s value. The alternative is potentially a diversified mix of trackers by geography and industry. 

Super cheap UK equities attracting bargain hunters. Where Private Equity goes, investors follow. So says the FT. (FT subscription required)

The director of the independent US Congressional Budget Office warns that rising debt and deficits in the USA could result in a shock reaction from bond markets. Might that have a knock-on effect on corporate bond and equity markets? A risk that investors should consider. 

Former President Donald Trump's media company launched on Nasdaq (26/03/24) with the ticker symbol DJT, and an initial valuation of $3 billion.  
 
Trump retains 58% of the newly merged company, which will attempt to take on the Big Tech, social media companies. Though not exactly that successfully so far. 

Thiel, Bezos and Zuckerberg join the parade of insiders selling US tech stocks as the FT joins the voices seeing this trend and starting to call the peak. (FT subscription required) 

Former CEO of bankrupt co-working company WeWork, Adam Neumann, made an offer to buy it back for over $500 million.  
 
The Wall Street Journal reported the former CEO, who was ousted over 5 years ago, has been working to put together a bid to take back control of bankrupt WeWork, which was once valued at over $47 billion. (Wall St Journal Subscription required)

German residential property prices dropped by a huge 8.4% in 2023. This is the biggest fall since Germany's statistics office began keeping records in 2000, and the first annual decline since 2007. 
 
Are we witnessing the slow collapse of the EU's largest economy as its export based economic model, built on cheap Russian energy and low interest rates, falls apart?

AMD and Intel stock prices fall on news that China will block use of their chips in government PCs.  
 
Could this news help British ARM, whose licensed architecture powers many of the Chinese chip manufacturers' processors such as Huawei's Kunpeng or Phytium Technology's Feiteng CPUs?  

China's EVE Energy, which supplies BMW with batteries, is in talks to build a huge £1.2 billion battery gigafactory in Coventry. 
 
Guandong based EVE Energy is in talks to build a 20GWh factory, expandable to 60GWh, which would be the biggest gigafactory in the UK, double the size of Nissan's in Sunderland and enough to power 600,000 electric vehicles a year.  

 
However, would this make the UK too reliant on China for such a critical energy resource? 

Japanese inflation rises to 2.8% in February, up from 2.2% registered in January. 
 
How will this news effect the Japanese Nikkei, which has just hit record highs above 41,000?

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