On Friday I missed the Bango AGM (I am a very smaller holder of the shares) as I wanted to attend the last day of the Mello event – a brief report on that is below. There was a surprising vote against the reappointment of Grant Thornton as the auditors at Bango (BGO). This is very unusual. Most auditors can assume they will get back in unless they have really cocked up a previous audit.
So why did Grant Thornton (GT) lose the vote with 55% of shareholders against? Was it disgruntled investors who held Patisserie or Globo previously – both cases of massive frauds undiscovered in the GT audits of those firms? Or was it because of events at AssetCo, Nichols or the University of Salford where GT were censured?
None of those reasons. According to Bango Chairman David Sear it was because proxy advisor ISS recommended voting against on the basis that the company had paid GT marginally more for other work than for their audit of the company. That’s despite Mr Sear’s comments that the latest audit by GT was the toughest they had ever had and they were competitive on a re-tender.
I suspect some investors might prefer another auditor even so.
Mello Meeting
This event in Chiswick was certainly worth attending – mainly for the quality of the speakers and the opportunity to network with other investors. Leon Boros gave a very good presentation on why you should invest directly in equities rather than funds or bonds. We probably can’t all manage to achieve his feat of becoming a multi-millionaire solely from ISA investment via a very focused portfolio. He not only evaluates companies well, but also has learned how to trade shares to maximise profits and minimise losses. He recommended the book “The Art of Execution” by Lee Freeman-Shor and I would do so also – see my previous blog post here for a review: https://roliscon.blog/2018/02/18/the-art-of-execution-essential-reading-for-investors/ .
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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