Tag: RBS

RBS, Shareholder Committees, LTIPs and Weir

It is good news that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have accepted a requisition for a resolution on a Shareholder Committee at their forthcoming AGM. ShareSoc and UKSA, who jointly promoted this under the leadership of Cliff Weight have issued a press release confirming the resolution has finally been accepted after some legal evasions to try and avoid it.

Shareholder Committees are a way to improve corporate governance at companies and ensure that the views of shareholders (and potentially other stakeholders) are noticed by the directors. It might put a stop to such problems as wildly excessive pay in public companies which non-executive directors have been unable to do – mainly because they are part of the problem.

RBS has an appalling track record of mismanagement and dubious ethics in recent years, from the dominance of Fred Goodwin who pursued a disastrous acquisition and then a right issue (in 2008) that was promoted by a misleading prospectus, to the activities of its Global Restructuring Group (GRG) which is still the subject of regulatory action and law suits, through involvement in the sub-prime lending problems that caused the financial crash to PPI complaints.

A Shareholder Committee might have tackled some of these issues before it was too late. You can read more about the campaign to get one at RBS, and how shareholder committees operate here: https://www.sharesoc.org/blog/campaign-to-obtain-shareholder-committee-at-rbs/ . I wrote the original note on the subject published there by ShareSoc back in 2011 and I still consider that it would be a step forward in UK corporate governance to have one in all public companies. But there is still strong opposition from boards to the idea mainly apparently on the principle that it might interfere with their decisions. That may be so but only if they are unjustifiable and it would not undermine the “unitary” structure of UK boards.

Shareholders in RBS should make sure they vote for the resolution to appoint one at the AGM, but winning the vote will not be easy. RBS have made it a “Special Resolution” which requires 75% support.

Another aspect of RBS that has concerned investors is the delay in paying out the legal settlement that was agreed over the Rights Issue. This has received a lot of media coverage but the problems faced by the legal firm now handling the settlement, Signature Litigation, should not be underestimated. It appears that they face two problems: 1) confirming the eligible claimants and their shareholdings; and 2) confirming the contracts with “litigation funders” who helped to finance the legal action and their entitlements.

You might think that confirming the shareholders would be easy but it is not. A very substantial number of the claimants will have held shares in nominee accounts (i.e. the shares they subscribed for were not put on their names on the share register of the company). They are quite likely to have subsequently sold the shares due to the collapse in the share price. After 10 years the nominee operator may not be able to confirm their past holding, and if they ever received a contract note or other written confirmation of their holding they may not have printed it out or retained a copy in digital form. Many claimants may have died in the meantime or become senile, or moved house or changed their email address so that would create other problems.

There are two morals to this story: 1) Make sure you always keep accurate records of share transactions, including any contract notes or confirmation of subscriptions; 2) do push for reform of the share registration system so that everyone is on the share register and there is no doubt about who owns what and when the shares were acquired.

As regards the contracts with litigation funders, it is entirely appropriate that Signature Litigation seek to confirm the details of those contracts and that they were appropriate, i.e. that real services or funding was provided and the commission due was fair and reasonable. The fact that these arrangements seem to be difficult to confirm, or at least are taking time, certainly raises some doubts that the campaign and legal action was competently managed all through its duration.

However, as I recently said to a member of the fourth estate, the action group(s) and shareholders involved in this case should be complimented in continuing the fight for ten years against very difficult odds and a ridiculously expensive legal system. I know exactly how difficult these cases are – the Lloyds Bank one is similar and is still in court. To obtain a settlement at all in the RBS case was an achievement, when there was no certainty at all that it would be won.

As regards corporate governance, an interesting item of news today was that from Weir Group Plc (WEIR) who are changing their remuneration scheme to replace LTIPs. That was after losing a “binding” vote on pay two years ago. The new scheme means shares will be awarded (valued at up to 125% of base salary for the CEO per year) with no performance conditions attached, although the board may be able to withhold awards for underperformance. The base salary of the CEO was £650,000 in 2016 while Weir’s share price is still less than it was 5 years ago. The justification for scrapping the LTIPs was that they paid out “all or nothing”, often based on the prices of commodities that directly affect Weir’s profits and share price. They are also changing the annual bonus so that it focuses more on “strategic objectives” rather than “order intake and personal objectives”.

Comment: as readers may be aware, I regularly vote against LTIPs on the basis that I am not convinced they drive good performance and tend to pay out ludicrously large amounts. The new scheme might ensure that directors do hold significant numbers of shares, which is a good thing, but with minimal performance conditions this looks like a simple increase in base salary, in reality a more than doubling for the CEO. Looking at the history of remuneration at Weir this looks like a case of wishing to continue to pay out the same remuneration by changing the remuneration scheme when past targets were not achieved.

They really have not learned much from past mistakes have they? This would be another company where it would be good to have a Shareholder Committee to bring some reality into the minds of the directors.

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

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RBS, GRG and Borrowing From Banks

I just had a read of the Financial Conduct Authority’s report on the Global Restructuring Group of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). This was published by the Treasury Select Committee despite the fact that the FCA wished to delay it further. At 361 pages in length, it’s not exactly a quick read.

The operations of GRG have been the subject of many complaints – hundreds in fact from mainly smaller businesses. This was a part of GRG where borrowers in default were placed so as to “help” them. In reality their fees were raised and many of the financially distressed companies that went through the process ended up being put into administration.

The FCA report certainly supports many of the complaints. It says one in six of the cases it examined RBS had caused “material financial distress”. They suggest there were major failings in GRG’s “governance and oversight arrangements” where narrow commercial objectives were paramount. The interests of their customers were ignored and the stated objectives of GRG to support the turnaround of potentially viable customers was not pursued. In summary they conclude there was “widespread inappropriate treatment of customers”.

In other words, the interests of RBS took precedence. Bearing in mind that this was the culture in RBS under the leadership of Fred Goodwin, it’s not that surprising. I saw this myself where RBS was involved with public companies in some difficulties. The other stakeholders seemed to be ignored by RBS who pursued their own interests regardless. But should borrowers have ever expected a bank like RBS to take account of their interests?

Regrettably small businesses often rely on bank lending to fund their working capital. This is a very dangerous practice when working capital can swing violently in response to market circumstances. Even larger companies often go bust when they take on too much debt unwisely and simply run out of cash – the latest example being Carillion of course.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, people have lowered their trust in bankers. They are now rated alongside estate agents and used car salesmen. But past trusts in bankers was always misplaced. Bankers are there to make money from you or your company. When you have lots of assets and cash, they are happy to lend on good terms. When you really need the funds, they will be reluctant to lend and if they do charge high fees and impose onerous terms. The moral is: businesses should be financed by risk capital, i.e. equity or preference shares.

Companies that gear up their balance sheets with debt rather than equity (and RBS itself was a great example of the problem of little equity to support its business back in 2008), might apparently be improving the “efficiency” of their financial structure and enable higher profits but in reality they are also increasing the riskiness of the business. Investors should be very wary of companies with high or increasing debts. It might look easy to repay the interest due out of cash flow now, but tomorrow it might look very different.

You can read the full FCA report on GRG here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/treasury/s166-rbs-grg.pdf

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

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ADVFN Results and More on Lloyds

ADVFN Plc (AFN) published their results for the year to June yesterday. I have a very small holding in the company (acquired for reasons I won’t go into). ADVFN are information providers on the stock market, primarily to private investors. Many people monitor their bulletin boards although like many such boards frequented by private investors, they are somewhat of a curate’s egg so far as serious or sophisticated investors are concerned.

But they certainly have a large following – they say they have 4 million registered users. Does this enormously large mailing list ensure they have a profitable business? In reality no.

Indeed last year they barely managed to break even (£47k operating profit) on £8.2 million of turnover. That is however a massive improvement on the previous year when they lost £650k on similar revenues.

At least they showed postive cash flow but the net assets of the company are £1.7 million so they have a long way to go before they show a decent return on the capital employed. Current liabilities also exceed current assets. At least they have changed their strategy so as to stop further investing with a focus on “profits rather than growth”.

Regretably this kind of business model just shows that private investors are reluctant to pay money for good information provision. Folks can sign up a lot of “free subscribers”, which is no doubt ADVFN’s customer base, by spending money on marketing but monetising those eyeballs is another matter altogether. Relying on advertising to do so is also getting more difficult as Google and social media platforms are tending to dominate that market.

The other moral of this story is that one needs to be wary of investing in companies with unproven business models. It’s easy to spin a good story about the enormous demand for a given service, but the real proof of the pudding is when the model generates profits (and cash as well of course). Companies like Uber and Deliveroo appear to be chasing the same mirage. Lots of people like the services and are willing to pay their low prices, but whether they can compete profitably is another matter.

Lloyds TSB/HBOS case. My previous blog post was on the topic of the current legal case being heard in the High Court. One of the witnesses called in the case is Hector Sants, former head of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) at the time of the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds. His evidence is to be heard in secret, for reasons unknown. Indeed, even the fact that this was to be so, was kept secret until challenged by media organisations.

Why is this relevant? Because it was suggested at the time that without the takeover of HBOS, Lloyds would not have had to raise extra capital (and it was that which diluted shareholders interests). But the FSA told them they would still have to raise more capital even if they did not proceed with the takeover. Some shareholders allege that this was a forceful encouragement by the Government to go ahead, regardless of the interests of their shareholders. Perhaps that might have been in the public interest, as was similarly argued on the re-capitalisation of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and other banks, which was effectively a partial nationalisation. But many shareholders are more concerned with their own immediate interests rather than the public interest although it could possibly be argued that ensuring no melt-down of the UK financial sector took place was also in their interests. So Mr Sants evidence might be very revealing about the motives and actions of the Government, but the public may not learn much about it, even at this late date.

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

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