Tag: RBS

Persimmon, the Cost of Houses, and Why I Don’t Invest in Banks

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I made the mistake of buying some shares in housebuilder Persimmon (PSN) last October. I am pondering what to with them after reading the Annual Report which I received over the weekend. It’s full of glowing references to future prospects but the share price is way down on my purchase price meaning the shares are now on a prospective p/e of 8.2 and a yield of 11.4%.

Clearly the price of shares in housebuilders have been falling due to worries about higher interest rates, which could make mortgages much less affordable, while the Government threatens them about the rectification costs of high-rise buildings. The latter may be less of an issue than the former, particularly for Persimmon, but will some increase in the cost of mortgages really put off people from buying houses? I doubt it. There is such an unsatisfied demand for more houses to get people off high rental prices and for bigger houses to cope with Working from Home that price will be a relatively small factor in my view. In any case so long as house price inflation is greater than mortgage interest rates, it is a simple argument that you should buy a house if mortgages are available.  

We bought our first house in 1976 for about £10,000 with a cheap mortgage from the local council when the interest rate was way below inflation. A bit of a no-brainer at the time. Inflation can be good if you are borrowing money rather than lending it! Our sons have managed to buy houses with small contributions from us but we now have grandsons who will no doubt need some assistance soon. Clearly we are moving back into the era of the 1970s in terms of financial planning.

I voted my shareholding in Persimmon electronically as Computershare provide an easy voting system for registered shares, but I voted against the Remuneration Report. Pay is still too generous at this company – the CEO earned in total £2.6 million last year. For 2022, fixed salary will be £746,000 plus 9% for a pension, plus up to 200% of salary for the annual bonus plus up to 200% for the LTIP. Real world economics have not yet sunk in so far as the Remuneration Committee is concerned it seems.  

The fact that Persimmon performed well last year and prospects are claimed to be good does not excuse this generosity.

Why I Don’t Invest in Banks

Reading the FT today reminds me why I don’t invest in banks. Barclays (BARC) have apparently managed to lose £450 million due to a technical error in their structured products unit. It will have to compensate customers after issuing $15.2 billion more Exchange Traded Notes than were registered for sale. The loss will affect Barclays share buy-backs and the share price was down 4% at the time of writing.

Another FT article reported on how National Westminster (formerly the Royal Bank of Scotland) has reduced the Government stake to less than 50%. The Government has of course lost many billions of pounds on its investment in RBS after it thought it could turn a profit by forcing RBS to give it an equity stake in the 2008/9 financial crisis. They were following the Swedish model which was successful in that country’s previous banking crisis. But HM Treasury was no better at understanding the accounts of banks and their risk profile than any other investors.

Paying for Share Tips

I see one of my former sparring partners is complaining about share tipsters who are paid to puff companies – apparently by being issued shares in the companies they talk about. It’s certainly a disreputable practice. Let it be stated now that I am not paid by anyone to talk about the companies I mention. I am not paid and never have been since I started commenting on financial matters!

This blog is not just free to readers, it also does not pay contributors.                                                                                                                                         

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Economic Trends, Audit Quality and the Importance of Management

The news on the epidemic and its impact on financial news continues to be consistently bad. GDP rebounded in May to be up 1.8% but that’s a lot less than forecast. It fell 20.3% in April but as many businesses did not reopen until June perhaps the May figures are not that surprising.

Masks now have to be worn in shops. This will be enforced by the police with possible fines of £100. That will surely discourage some people from shopping on the High Streets.

The BBC ran a story today that said that scientists forecast a second wave of the virus in Winter with up to 120,000 deaths. But that is a “worse case” scenario. The claim is that the colder weather enables the virus to survive longer and with more people spending time indoors, it may spread more. I think this is being pessimistic but it’s certainly not having a positive effect on the stock market.

The London Evening Standard ran a lengthy and very negative article yesterday on the impact of the virus on London with a headline describing it as “an economic meltdown”. It suggested 50,000 jobs will go in the West End alone due to a decline in retail, tourism and hospitality sectors. Commuters are still reluctant to get on public transport – trains, underground or buses. In Canary Wharf only 7,000 of the 120,000 people who normally work there are at their desks it is reported. One problem apparently is that with numbers able to enter lifts being restricted it can take a very long time to get all the normal staff at work in high rise buildings. Hotels, clubs and casinos have been particularly hard hit with the extension of the Congestion Charge (a.k.a. tax) discouraging visits. 

Audit Quality

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has confirmed what we probably already knew from the number of problems with company accounts – that audit quality has declined in the last year. Following reviews of audits by the major audit firms including PwC, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, BDO and Grant Thornton there were a number of criticisms made by the FRC. The firms PwC, KPMG and Grant Thornton were particularly singled out. The last firm was judged to require improvement in 45% of its audits.

We were promised a tougher stance from the FRC but it is clearly not having the required impact. Published accounts are still clearly not to be relied upon which is a great shame and undermines confidence in public companies.

There were a couple of interesting articles in last week’s Investors Chronicle (IC). One was on the investment approach of Harry Nimmo of Aberdeen Standard. He is quoted as saying: “We do measure prospective and future valuations – it’s not completely ignored. But it doesn’t lead our stock selection, and we don’t have price or valuation targets”. Perhaps he does not trust the accounts either? He does apparently screen for 13 factors though including some related to momentum and growth.

Management Competence

The other good article in IC was by Phil Oakley headlined “How important is management”. If you don’t trust the accounts of a company, it’s all the other factors that help you to judge the quality of a business and the prospects for long-term returns which are important. Phil says that “management does matter” but he thinks some investors overemphasise it’s importance.

How do you judge the quality of the management? One can of course look at the results in the financial numbers over past years but that can suffer from a major time lag. In addition management can change so past results may not be the result of work by the current CEO but their predecessor. This is what I said in one of my books: “Incompetent or inexperienced management can screw up a good business in no time at all, although the bigger the company, the less likely it is that one person will have an immediate impact. But Fred Goodwin allegedly managed to turn the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), at one time the largest bank in the world, into a basket case that required a major Government bail-out in just a few years”.

RBS was also a case where the company’s financial results were improved by increasing the risk profile of the business – the return on capital was improved but the capital base was eroded. Management can sometimes improve short term results to the disadvantage of the long-term health of the business.

Is it worth talking to management, say at AGMs or other opportunities? Some people think not because you can easily be misled by glib speakers. But I suggest it is so long as you ask the right questions and don’t let them talk solely about what they want to discuss. Even if you let them ramble, you can sometimes pick up useful tips on their approach to running the business. Are they concerned about their return on capital, or even know what it is, can be a good question for example. I recall one conversation with an AIM company CEO where he bragged about misleading the auditors of a previous company about the level of stock they held, or another case where a CEO disclosed he was suffering from a brain tumour which had not been disclosed to shareholders. Unfortunately in the current epidemic we only get Zoom conversations rather than private, off-the-record chats.

Talking to competitors of a business can tell you a lot, as is talking to former employees who frequently attend AGMs. Everything you learn can help to build up a picture of the personality and competence of the management, and the culture that they are building in the company. The articles being published on Wirecard and Boohoo in the last few days tell us a great deal about the problems in those companies but you could have figured them out earlier by some due diligence activity on the management.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson  )

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Royal Bank of Scotland AGM – How to Vote

Shareholders in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) will have received their Annual Report and Notice of the AGM in the post today. The meeting is on the 25th April for those in a nominee account, and its being held at the RBS headquarters in Scotland of course.

There are 28 resolutions on the Agenda. Please ensure that you vote your shares. Resolution Number 28 directs the board to appoint a Shareholder Committee and was put forward jointly by ShareSoc and UKSA. The board has again opposed that resolution on spurious grounds. A Shareholder Committee would provide a say on such matters as director nominations, remuneration and strategy and that resolution should be supported by all thinking shareholders. See this document for more explanation and a list of the resolutions: https://www.investors.rbs.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR/results-center/letter-to-shareholders-2019.pdf

Corporate governance at RBS is still poor and a Shareholder Committee would cure that. The Financial Times today highlighted one remuneration issue which is that the CEO, Ross McEwan will receive a pension contribution this year of 35% of salary, i.e. £350,000. This seems to be the latest wheeze to avoid scrutiny of high pay with other major UK banks paying similar amounts. So another recommendation is to vote against the Remuneration Report (Resolution No. 2).

Personally I will also be voting against the authorisation of share buy-backs (Resolutions 26 and 27), and against the resolution that permits General Meetings at 14 days notice (No. 24), as I always do.

I will also be voting against the Chairman Howard Davies (Resolution 5) for opposing Resolution 28.

For more information see the ShareSoc blog item here: https://www.sharesoc.org/sharesoc-news/vote-for-rbs-agm-special-resolution-28-shareholder-committee/

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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RBS Share Buy-Back

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is proposing to buy-back up to 4.99% of its shares from the stake held by the Government (by UKFI on its behalf). At present the Government holds 62% of the company stemming from the bailout in the banking crisis ten years ago. They have been trying to get shot of it ever since as no Tory government thinks it should be investing in banks. This latest proposal makes it clear that UKFI cannot easily sell the shares in the market, nor place them with institutions, perhaps because there are still outstanding lawsuits faced by the company.

Should shareholders support this proposal? I don’t think so, and I will be voting against it with the few shares I hold which were acquired to support the ShareSoc campaign for the appointment of a Shareholder Committee. Incidentally this proposal rather suggests that it is now even more important to have such a Committee because this proposal may be of advantage to the Government but it is not at all clear whether it is of benefit to shareholders as a whole.

Fortunately UKFI won’t be able to vote their shares at the EGM to approve the proposed buy-back so other shareholders will decide the issue.

Other shareholders might wish to ask themselves, why should shares only be bought back from UKFI and not all shareholders, e.g. via a tender offer. Another negative is that this share buy-back is effectively a reduction in capital when banks like RBS still have a relatively thin equity capital base. In any case, I generally vote against buy-backs other than in investment trusts. They are usually misconceived. The Government commissioned research into share buy-backs a year ago on the grounds that they may be being used to inflate executive pay (reducing the number of shares in issue increases earnings per share which is a common element in executive pay bonus and LTIP schemes). The research has yet to produce a report.

Personally I would like to see share buy-backs made illegal except in very limited circumstances, as they used to be. They are rarely of benefit to other shareholders and can be used by foolish management to try to manage the share price.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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KIDs and New Bank Claim Platform

The rules for the production of KIDs (Key Information Documents) laid down by the EU have been severely criticised because they may give investors very misleading views on likely future returns from funds. This is because their estimate of future returns are based on short-term historic data. This has caused many fund managers of investment trusts to suggest that they should be ignored and investors look at the other data that the companies publish to get a better view of likely future returns. This writer certainly ignores the KIDs for the investment trusts I hold.

One anomaly is that KIDs are now only required for investment trusts not open-ended funds such as OEICs. Implementation for the latter was delayed and a decision has been made to delay them again. This is what the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) just said about this: “The expected delay to KIDs for UCITS funds is welcome but leaves investors in non-UCITS funds out in the cold.  Recent EU proposals to reform KIDs do not address their fundamental failings and will either do no good or make matters worse.  Investors now face being misled by KIDs for years to come. As the EU appears unwilling or unable to protect non-UCITS investors, the FCA should take the lead and warn investors not to rely on these documents.  It should ensure that the misleading information in KIDs does not pollute other areas of the market, for example by prohibiting it from being used in financial promotions and in search filters on websites.”

It’s worth pointing out that investment trusts are a peculiarly British approach to providing funds to retail investors. In effect the EU has adopted rules that prejudice investment trusts and if our future financial rules are aligned with the EU that prejudice will continue after March 2019.

Incidentally I was somewhat baffled by the furore in Parliament over disclosure of the legal advice on Brexit. The previous legal advice on Brexit was 43 pages long. The new “full” legal advice is 6 pages and does not appear to contain more information. It’s just an executive summary which highlights a few issues. So many MPs and the media are just stirring and creating dissension in my view for no good reason. Perhaps they simply have not read both documents like me.

Neil Mitchell, who has been fighting the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) over their actions over the pre-pack administration of Torex Retail for years, has launched a judicial review against the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) over their failure to disqualify certain executives of RBS involved in the activities of the Global Restructuring (GRG) at RBS. This is the group that is alleged to have connived in destroying good small companies for the benefit of RBS. It looks a difficult judicial review to get even past the first hearing by a judge to me for more than one reason from my knowledge of such cases, but I am no lawyer.

He has also launched a new Claims Management company to pursue legal claims against RBS and other banks on behalf of those aggrieved by what happened in the bank financial crisis and the activities of banks in general. The new platform has a web site here: www.banksclaimsgroup.com . Anyone who thinks they have such a claim needs to look very carefully about how this new group is to be run and financed. There are lots of lawyers keen to earn fees from pursuing such claims but whether they have a realistic prospect of success is often ignored. Also just because folks feel they have a grievance does not mean they have a winnable legal case. And as we have seen from the RBOS Shareholders Action Group, often any awards when won are can be largely diverted to litigation funders and others.

But Neil Mitchell certainly has much knowledge and experience that might be of assistance to others.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Royal Bank of Scotland on BBC2

Some readers may have watched the BBC2 programme on Tuesday about the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). It showed the hubris of Fred Goodwin – suites at the Ritz, private jets and a new headquarters opened by the Queen in which he had an enormous office. But when I posted a brief comment on the Stockopedia blog to the effect that the bail out had political overtones, it got some criticism. Indeed to my mind the programme seemed to suggest that Alistair Darling and Mervyn King were heroes who rescued the bank, and the country, from financial disaster and there was no contrary opinion on the merits of what they did.

So here’s some more explanation of the problems of RBS and how they should have been tackled.

RBS certainly was acting aggressively before the crash in 2008. It had one of the lowest capital asset ratios of any bank and then proceeded to acquire ABN-AMRO after competing with Barclays in a bidding war. RBS seemed to expect the profits from ABN-AMRO to improve its cash flow. Although it’s not easy to see the cash flows in banks, they can run out of cash particularly when loans they have borrowed become due for repayment.

One needs to understand that all banks operate on a knife edge – they have massive liabilities backed by massive assets, with only a thin slice of shareholders equity in the middle. So you will find in the December 2008 balance sheet of RBS that it had assets of £2,401,652 million, liabilities of £2,321,154 million and shareholders’ equity of only £80,498 million.

When the financial crisis arose as a result of the realisation that the US sub-prime mortgage market was heading for a fall, liquidity in the bank loan market disappeared. That is what caused the crash at Northern Rock – see: https://roliscon.blog/2017/09/02/northern-rock-10-years-after-collapse/ for past comments on that. Northern Rock was not balance sheet insolvent which would have triggered administration, it was cash flow insolvent. It just ran out of cash because folks were withdrawing cash from the bank and it could not refinance the short-term loans it had taken out in the money markets. Similar problems caused the collapse of Lehman Bros and Bradford & Bingley and the former had world-wide repercussions. The whole world was suffering a banking liquidity crisis.

There were of course subsequent steps taken to tighten up on the bank asset ratios which meant they had to raise more capital. That put many banks into an even more difficult situation. There also was a growing realisation that many banks had assets on their balance sheet that were questionable in value, i.e. debts might not be repaid but they had not been written down because of defective accounting standards (see more in today’s FT on that subject).

In addition the UK Government made the mistake of nationalising Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley which told any international investor of equity, or even debt, into UK banks that they had no real security. The Government could prejudice their investment using the new legislation that was introduced, at the drop of a hat.

As the BBC programme described, there came a day when RBS had to tell the Governor of the Bank of England that they would run out of cash in a few hours. The collapse of RBS would certainly have undermined the whole UK banking system with other banks also crashing as they had outstanding loans to RBS. The Government’s answer was to launch a massive “recapitalisation” of RBS and other banks via forcing then to sell equity stakes in return for cash. They were given no option but to accept overnight. This effectively meant a nationalisation of RBS because they acquired control of it, along with major stakes in other banks.

Was there a different way they could have taken? Banks frequently run out of cash because of the narrow equity they hold. They can go for years without a hiccup, paying out good returns to shareholders in the meantime, until minor events disrupt this idyll. But the Bank of England can always provide loans to relieve the cash flow pressure if nobody else will. The Bank can of course effectively print money if necessary to do that. RBS did of course undertake a massive rights issue (the largest ever) to strengthen its balance sheet but that was not sufficient. Could they have got by with funding from the Bank of England when the crunch came? I suggest they might. I suggest the prime reason for the approach that was taken was the desire of the Labour Government (headed by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling) to take control of the banking sector.

In reality other countries tackled their similar problems in different ways. But the UK was the most severely hit by the financial crisis. It was of course not just RBS that had exposure to US sub-prime mortgages. Other major world banks had similar difficulties. But the approach taken in the UK destroyed confidence in the UK financial sector in very short order.

That does not of course make any excuse for the mismanagement of RBS by Fred Goodwin and the general incompetence of the board of RBS in the critical period. But it is all too easy to lay the blame for the UK banking crisis on one individual – it’s called “personification”. But there were no heroes either.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Lax Regulation (Globo, GRG) and Japanese Trust AGM

Globo was one of those AIM companies that turned out to be a complete fraud. Back in December 2015 the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) announced an investigation into the audits of the company by Grant Thornton (GT). Even the cash reported on the balance sheet in the consolidated accounts of the parent company proved to be non-existent (or had been stolen perhaps). I have previously complained about the slow progress and the lack of any information on this investigation.

But former shareholders need no longer hold their breath – the FRC have announced that they have dropped the investigation on the basis that there is no realistic prospect of a finding of “misconduct” by Grant Thornton UK. It would seem that GT relied on the audits of the subsidiary companies in Greece and elsewhere over which the UK authorities have no jurisdiction.

There may be on-going investigations by other bodies including a review of the activities of GT in Greece but this makes it appear that the chance of action is fading away. Not that shareholders were ever likely to recover their losses. It is disappointing that the FRC have not taken a tougher line on this matter as questions about the accounts of Globo were publicly raised a long time before it went bust, and I even spoke to some staff of Grant Thornton UK at a Globo meeting telling them they needed to examine their accounts carefully. One would have thought that they would have done a very thorough examination of the subsidiary audits, but it seems not so.

I was about to submit my comments on the Kingman “Review of the Financial Reporting Council” – all ten pages of it – but will now have to amend it to include more criticism. I’ll publish it on the Roliscon web site a.s.a.p.

Another example of regulatory inaction is the announcement that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will not be doing anything about the past activities of the Global Restructuring Group (GRG) at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). After a review they found no evidence that RBS artificially distressed firms for their benefit (that’s not what the complainants say) although they did find inappropriate treatment of customers. But the FCA decided they could do nothing because some parts of the activities of GRG were unregulated and action against the senior management had little hope of success. So the perpetrators are off the hook.

I received an interesting newsletter from White & Case, one of the leading commercial law firms, which summarized the latest report from the FCA on their enforcement activities. It was headlined “FCA Enforcement – More cases, increased costs, fewer fines” which put the report in context. The number of “open cases” has doubled in two years while the number of staff has remained the same, i.e. more work but no more resources. Enforcement action has slowed down, probably for that reason, and fines have also dropped. Only 16 fines were imposed in the last year.

JPMorgan Japan Smaller Companies Trust

Yesterday I attended the AGM of JPMorgan Japan Smaller Companies Trust (JPS) which turned out to be a more interesting meeting than I anticipated. This is one of my Brexit hedges – pound falling means any overseas investment is likely to be a good one, and I always like small cap funds.

This trust has a good track record – NAV up 27.8%, 20.8% and 12.2% in the last three years so it is well ahead of its benchmark. Not knowing much about the Japanese market the presentation from the fund managers (via video from Japan) was particularly interesting. Equity markets in Japan have been buoyed by QE activities from the Bank of Japan – apparently they have not just been buying bonds but also equities in the stock market! But the economy is facing major structural challenges from an ageing and declining population. This was one slide they presented:

Japan's Structural Challenge

However, the managers are not too concerned because they ignore “macro” trends when investing anyway. They clearly think they can still achieve good results because of a focus on specific areas of the market, e.g. healthcare, employee benefits (staff are being paid more as they become in short supply), robot appliances, etc. Also corporate governance is improving, albeit slowly, which is of benefit to minority shareholders.

The other interesting issue that arose at this AGM was the proposed new dividend policy. They changed the Articles at the meeting to allow the company to pay dividends out of capital and also proposed a resolution to adopt a new dividend policy of 1% of assets per quarter, i.e. 4% dividend yield per annum when it was nil last year. This prompted a vigorous debate among shareholder attendees with complaints about it meaning shareholders will be paying more tax, often on unwanted dividends. The retiring Chairman, Alan Clifton, said the board had proposed this because they were advised that this would help to make the company’s shares more attractive to investors. The shares are currently on a persistent wide discount of about 11% and it was hoped this would close the discount. Also as most private shareholders now hold their shares in ISAs and SIPPs, there would be no tax impact on them. I pointed out direct shareholders could always sell a few shares if they wished to receive an “income” but there are obviously many small shareholders who do not understand this point or prefer to see a regular dividend payment. At least the above summarized the key points in the debate.

When it came to the show of hands vote on the resolution, it looked to me as though there were more votes AGAINST than FOR. The Chairman seemed to acknowledge this (I did not catch his exact words), but said that the proxy votes were overwhelmingly in favour. He then moved on to the other resolutions. I suggested he needed to call a poll, which of course nobody fancied because of the time required even though it would be legally the correct thing to do. So instead it was suggested that perhaps the count of hands was wrong so that vote was taken again – and narrowly passed this time. My rating as a trouble maker has no doubt risen further.

Anyway, I actually abstained on the vote on that resolution because I am in two minds on the benefit. As Alan Clifton pointed out, the impact of a similar change at International Biotechnology Trust (IBT) where he was also Chairman was very positive. My only comment to him was I thought 4% was a bit high. The board will no doubt review the impact in due course, but it seems likely that it will have a positive impact on the discount as the shares will immediately look more attractive to private investors.

In conclusion, what I expected to be a somewhat boring event turned out to be quite interesting. That is true of many AGMs. Japan might have more difficult “structural” challenges even than the UK, with or without Brexit. As regards the regulatory environment covered in the first part of this article I suggest the laws and regulations are too lax with too many loopholes. I think they need rewriting to be more focused on the customers or investors interests.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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RBS Sale and Blackrock Smaller Companies AGM

The Government is selling off another tranche of its holding in the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). By selling another 8% it will reduce its holding to 62% of the company. The Government (or “taxpayers” as some described them) will face a loss of about £2 billion on what it originally paid for the shares. There were howls of protest from some politicians. John McDonnell, shadow chancellor, said “There is no economic justification for this sell-off of RBS shares. There should be no sale of RBS shares full-stop. But particularly with such a large loss to the taxpayers who bailed out the bank”.

I think he is suffering from the problem of “loss aversion”, i.e. a reluctance to sell a losing investment rather than looking at the current value of the bank and its prospects. The market price is surely the best indicator of the value of the company – it’s what willing buyers will pay, and what sellers consider a fair price. One aspect to consider is that the value of the business may be depressed because nobody likes to buy shares in companies where there is one dominant controlling shareholder and particularly so if that shareholder is a government. The only way the UK Government can solve that problem is to reduce its holding in stages, as they are doing. Forget the prospective loss on the share sale. Better to accept the price offered and reinvest the proceeds in something else. The Government has lots of things where it needs more cash – the NHS, Education, Defence, Brexit plans, you name it.

Mr McDonnell may be particularly unhappy as he hopes to take power at the next General Election and RBS is one of the few remnants of the past Labour government’s major stakes in UK banks. After Gordon Brown nationalised Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, they took effective control of RBS, and to a large extent Lloyds. Only Barclays managed to escape by doing a quick deal with middle-east investors which has been the subject of legal action, only recently thrown out by the courts. For any socialist, particularly of the extreme left like Mr McDonnell, the ability to tell banks what to do is an undoubted objective. Banks tend to reduce lending when the economy worsens and their clients start to have difficulties but the claim is often that such reduction in lending compounds the economic woes.

Yesterday I attend the Annual General Meeting of Blackrock Smaller Companies Trust Plc (BRSC). What follows are some brief highlights. This company has a good track record – some 15 consecutive years of outperforming its benchmark by active management. So much for passive index investing. It has been managed by Mike Prentis for many years assisted by Roland Arnold more recently. The share price rose by 25% last year but the discount to NAV has narrowed recently to about 6% so some might say it is no longer a great bargain. The company does not have a fixed discount control mechanism and has traded at much higher discounts in the past.

It’s a stock-pickers portfolio of UK smaller companies, including 43% of AIM companies and 143 holdings in total. Many of the holdings are the same companies I have invested in directly, e.g. GB Group who issued their annual results on the same day with another great set of figures.

Mike Prentis gave his key points for investing in a company as: strong management, a unique business with strong pricing power, profitable track record, throwing off cash, profits convert into cash and a strong balance sheet. They generally go for small holdings initially, even when they invest in IPOs, i.e. they are cautious investors.

When it came to questions, one shareholder questioned the allocation of management fees as against income or capital (25% to 75% in this company). He suggested this was reducing the amount available for reinvestment. But he was advised otherwise. Such allocation is now merely an accounting convention, particularly as dividends can now be paid out of capital. But he could not be convinced otherwise.

Another investor congratulated the board on removing the performance fee. Shareholders were clearly happy, and nobody commented on the fact that the Chairman, Nicholas Fry had been on the board since 2005 and the SID, Robert Robertson, had also been there more than 9 years – both contrary to the UK Corporate Governance Code. The latter did collect 5% of votes against his re-election, but all resolutions were passed on a show of hands.

I was positively impressed on the whole.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Two AGMs (Accesso and Foresight VCT) in one day

Yesterday I attended the Annual General Meeting of Accesso (ACSO) in Twyford at the somewhat early time of 10.00 am with the result that I got bogged down in the usual rush hour traffic on the M25. What a horrendous road system we have in London! A symptom of long term under-investment in UK road infrastructure.

Accesso provides “innovative queuing, ticketing and POS solutions” to the entertainment sector (e.g. theme parks) although they have been spreading into other application areas. The business has been growing rapidly under the leadership of Tom Burnet who moved from being CEO to Executive Chairman a while back.

Tom opened the meeting by introducing the board, including new CEO Paul Noland who is based in the USA where they now have 5 offices apparently. He also covered that morning’s trading statement which was positive and mentioned deals with Henry Ford Health System and an extension to an existing agreement with Cedar Fair Entertainment. Expectations for the year remain unchanged. Questions were then invited – I have just covered a few below.

I raised a concern about the low return on capital in the company (now less than 5% irrespective of how one cares to measure it). I suggested the reasons were large increase in administrative expenses (up 43% last year) and the cost of acquisitions. Did the board have any concerns about this? Apparently not. The reason is partly the acquisitions and the costs might come down as they rationalise operations but they are in no rush to do so.

The Ford deal was mentioned and Tom said this is one deal where the acquisition of TE2 has provided the technology to assist closure. This is what the company said about TE2 when they bought it: “The Directors of accesso believe that TE2’s cloud-based solution offers market-leading personalisation capabilities and data orchestration technologies which capture, model and anticipate guest behaviour and preferences not only pre- and post-visit online, but in the physical in-venue environment.  Personalisation is achieved via many heuristics, including machine-learning-based recommendations, in order both to enhance guest experiences and to provide actionable analytics and insights to the operations, retail and marketing organisations.”. I am sure all readers understand that. Hospital systems are clearly one target for this technology.

The vote was taken on a show of hands so far as I could tell, although the announcement the next day of the votes suggested it was done on a poll which is surely wrong. But there were significant numbers of votes (over 2 million) against several directors and against share allotment resolutions. I asked why and was told it was because of a proxy advisory service recommending voting against, allegedly because of some misunderstanding. The answer to my question seemed somewhat evasive though.

In summary, shareholders are clearly happy with the progress of the company but with a prospective p/e of 41 (and no dividends), a lot of future growth is clearly in the share price. Corporate governance seems rather hit and miss.

I then drove into London to the offices of Foresight in the Shard, again journey time a lot more than it should have been due to road closures, lane removal for cycle lanes, etc, etc. Interesting to note a large hoarding on the elevated section of the A4 inviting anyone who had a complaint against RBS and the GRG operation to contact them.

Also interesting to note when I stopped for fuel at a service station on the M4 that at the desk they were serving Greggs food and coffee as well as taking payment for fuel. I know that Greggs have kiosks in some motorway service areas but this is perhaps a new initiative to expand their market. It’s rather like the small Costa coffee outlets that are in all kinds of places. I am a shareholder in Greggs but this was news to me. Obviously I need to get out more to see what is happening in the real world.

The visit to Foresight was to attend the AGM of Foresight VCT (FTV) one of my oldest holdings. Effectively I have been locked in after originally claiming capital gains roll-over relief. It’s also one of the worst of my historic Venture Capital Trust holdings in terms of overall performance over the years.

I did not need to tell them again how dire the performance of the company had been over the last 20 years because another shareholder did exactly that. But I did query whether the claimed total return last year of 6.5% given by fund manager Russell Healey in his presentation was accurate. It was claimed to be so. Perhaps performance is improving but I am not sure I want to stick around to see the outcome.

One particularly issue in this company is the performance fee payable to the manager which I wrote about in my AGM report and on the Sharesoc blog last year. You can see why the manager has such plush offices as they have surely done very nicely out of this and their other VCTs over the years while shareholders have not, and will continue to do so.

Several shareholders raised questions about the reappointment of KPMG bearing in mind that in Foresight 4 VCT the accounts were possibly defective and a dividend might have been paid illegally. But the board seemed to know nothing about this matter. KMPG got about 6 hands voting against their reappointment and the board is going to look into the matter.

The above is just a brief report on the meeting as I understand Tim Grattan may produce a longer one for ShareSoc.

To conclude, both AGMs were worth attending as I learned a few things I did not already know. For example it seems my holding in Ixaris, an unlisted fintech company where Foresight have a holding, may be worth more than I thought. But I still think their valuation is a bit optimistic.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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Shareholder Democracy, RBS, Rightmove AGM and Stockopedia

There is a very good article by City Slicker in this weeks’ edition of Private Eye (No.1469) on the subject of “Apathy in the City”. The article comments on the “disengaged” share owners in Persimmon who failed to vote against the remuneration report, or simply abstained. See my previous blog post on that subject here: https://roliscon.blog/2018/04/25/persimmon-remuneration-institutions-duck-responsibility/

The article highlights the issue that the many private shareholders in the company probably also did not vote (they could have swung the result), because they have effectively been disenfranchised by the nominee system that is now dominant. The writer says “This democratic deficit has been richly rewarding for companies, share registrars and those representing retail investors”, and the result “has been a real diminution in shareholder democracy”. A few more articles of that ilk may sooner or later impress on politicians and the Government that substantial reform is necessary.

The article also points out how the EU Shareholder Rights Directive, one of the few good things to come out of the EU bureaucracy in my opinion, is being misinterpreted by the UK Government to suggest beneficial owners are not shareholders.

To get the message across I have written to my M.P. on the subject of Beaufort and the substantial financial losses that thousands of investors will suffer there as a result of the use of nominee accounts compounded by the current insolvency rules. If anyone would like a copy of my letter to crib and send to their own M.P., just let me know.

In the meantime the AGM at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is due on the 30th May. The RBS board has opposed the resolution put forward by ShareSoc and UKSA to establish a “shareholder committee”. That would be a step forward in corporate governance in my view and shareholders would be wise to vote in favour of that resolution (no.27). I do hold a few shares in the company but will be unable to attend the AGM in Edinburgh so if anyone would like a proxy appointment from me so that you can attend and voice your own views on the subject, please let me know. You would at least have the pleasure of seeing the buildings created in Gogarburn by empire builder Fred Goodwin for RBS.

The RBS Annual Report is a 420 page document which must make it one of the heaviest UK Plc Annual Reports. The motto on the cover is quite amusing. It reads “Simple, safe and customer focussed” – perhaps it means they intend to get back to that because RBS was none of these things during the financial crisis that almost bankrupted the business.

One aspect that City Slicker criticizes in the aforementioned article is the low “turn-out” of voters at AGMs, i.e. the low percentage of shareholder votes cast even including “votes withheld”. A third were not voted at Persimmon. That is not untypical at AGMs in my experience although institutional voting has improved in recent years. It’s often the private investors now who don’t vote due to the difficulty, or downright impossibility of voting shares held in nominee accounts.

But there was no such problem at Rightmove Plc on the 4th May. About 85% of votes were cast. As a holder I could not attend in person, but Alex Lawson has written a report which is on the ShareSoc Members Network. One surprising result though was that long-standing Chairman Scott Forbes got 39% of votes against his re-election and Remuneration Committee Chairman Peter Williams got 37% against. I voted against the latter, against the Remuneration Report and did not support the re-election of Scott Forbes either. With 12 plus years of service, it is surely time to look to board succession planning and a new Chairman. The board is to look into why they got so many votes against the two resolutions which is certainly unusual.

To conclude I see that blogger/journalist Tom Winnifrith is having yet another go at mild-mannered Ed Croft of Stockopedia after a spat at the UK Investor Show over a trivial matter. Since then Tom has been attacking Ed over “recommendations” given by Stockopedia in his usual rottweiler manner. As a user of Stockopedia and other stock screening services, I don’t expect absolutely all the positively rated stocks to be great investments. I know that some will be dogs because either the accounts are fraudulent, the management incompetent or unexpected and damaging events will appear out of the blue. So for example, Globo’s accounts fooled many people including me until late in the day so any system that relied just on analysis of the financial numbers would be likely to mislead. But stock screens rely on the laws of averages. The fact that there will be one or two rotten apples in the barrel does not mean that stock screens cannot be a useful tool to quickly scan and dispose of a lot of “also-rans” in the investment world. They can quickly highlight the stocks that are worthy of more analysis, or prompt dismissal.

Winnifrith seems unable to differentiate between meritorious causes that deserve the full power of his literary talents and those where his imitation of a sufferer from Tourette’s syndrome where he heaps abuse on innocent victims goes beyond the bounds of reason. Stockopedia provides a useful service to investors. Let us hope that the saying there is “no such thing as bad publicity” applies in this case.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

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