Tag: Voting

It’s the AGM Season – But Voting Not Easy

We are now in the big Annual General Meeting Season as most companies now have a financial year ending in December. I try to vote all my shareholdings in the companies I hold, but it’s not always made easy.

Some companies where I have direct holdings (and hence am on the share register) no longer send out proxy voting forms. So I have to use my own (see https://www.roliscon.com/proxy-voting.html for a form you can use).

But as most of my holdings are held in ISAs and SIPPs (i.e. in nominee accounts) I have to rely on the broker providing a voting system. But most do not which I find utterly despicable. All shareholders should have the right to vote their shares and if you have an ISA account the ISA operator must vote as you instruct them to do. But not providing an on-line voting system obstructs and frustrates shareholders.

One company I hold shares in is SEGRO (SGRO) and I reviewed their Annual Report (cover photo above) today before voting my shares. This is a property company with a large portfolio of warehouses. One can hardly complain about their performance with adjusted earnings per share up 15% last year. But I voted against 8 resolutions out of 24 on the AGM Agenda.

I voted against their remuneration report and policy. The pay of the CEO last year was £5.2 million – up by 39% on last year, which I simply consider to be unreasonable and unnecessary. In addition they are proposing to increase the LTIP limit as a percentage of salary from 250% to 300%. I don’t like LTIPs at all as to my mind they don’t incentivise directors and any LTIP of more than 100% simply drives wage inflation.

I also voted against three of the directors including the head of the Remuneration Committee as I am not clear what some of them contribute in terms of experience and they have too many directors anyway.

I also voted against the share buy-back resolution as I always do as there is no justification in this business, and against the change of notice for general meetings – it’s unnecessary and potentially undermines shareholder voting.

In summary I voted against resolutions 3,4,6,9,13,19, 23 and 24 – I suggest other shareholders do the same.

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

You can “follow” this blog by entering your email address below. You will then receive an email alerting you to new posts as they are added.

Abcam, Pay and Voting

As a long-standing shareholder in Abcam (ABC), I have just received the Annual Report and I am not happy.

Abcam rather surprised the market when they issued their preliminary results which showed a massive investment in a new Oracle IT system was in difficulties. Clearly the project is over-budget and over-schedule. Costs are ramping up in other areas also and the result was a lowered broker forecast and an instant collapse in the share price – down over 30% at one point on the day. It’s been recovering since but it certainly looked like a case of mismanagement of the IT function. As a former IT manager of a large public company, I have seen this kind of thing before so I am none too impressed. Massive commitments to a big-bang approach to a new IT system which is sold on the basis that it will solve all your problems, but rarely does. So that will be one thing to raise at the AGM which I plan to attend.

But remuneration will be another issue to be questioned. The CEO, Alan Hirzell, seems to be doing a good job but his pay last year was £1.8 million. The company is now proposing a new Remuneration Policy which will increase the maximum potential LTIP award from 150% to 400%. In my view this is outrageously generous – I normally vote against any bonus scheme that awards more than 100% of salary as it promotes risky behaviour of the worst kind as we saw in the financial crisis with banker’s bonuses. The CFO will also get an LTIP with a maximum 200% bonus. Although there will be performance targets the justification given is that it will “promote the underlying philosophy of share ownership among our Executive Directors and reward the sustainable delivery of long-term profitable growth”. Hogwash is my comment.

So I will be voting against Louise Patten who is Chair of the Remuneration Committee as I did last year, and against her two colleagues, Mara Aspinall and Sue Harris who also have too many “roles” at other organisations in my view – contrary to ShareSoc guidelines. Also I will be voting against the new Chairman, Peter Allen, who should know better than to allow this kind of pay package to go forward. Plus I will be voting against the Remuneration Report and Remuneration Policy recommendations. In addition, there is a resolution to approve a change to the 2015 Share Option Plan for staff which permits nil-cost awards which seems unjustified so a vote against that also.

Note that they are also introducing a new all-employee share purchase plan which is not even being put to shareholders – not required under AIM rules they say.

Incidentally Louise Patten has an interesting career history. To quote from Wikipedia “In 2006 she started as a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer plc. As chairman of the Remuneration Committee, she was responsible for approving a bonus scheme which was criticised for making it easier for executive directors to change the associated growth targets”. She was also a non-executive director of Bradford & Bingley when the company failed and was nationalised in 2008. There may be more interesting information that I could not see because in Google a search for “Louise Patten” retrieves only a few entries with the statement “Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe”.

I suggest other shareholders vote against the aforementioned resolutions likewise.

But it is easy to vote if you are on the register of the company and have been sent a proxy voting form. Equiniti, the company’s registrar, do provide an easy on-line voting system unlike other registrars, although for some peculiar reason they do not advertise the fact this year. All you need is the three numbers on the voting card and you can vote here: https://www.shareview.co.uk/views2/asp/VoteLogin.asp . No need to register or remember your log-in and password – just vote. As I said to a Link Asset Services representative at another AGM last week, why don’t they provide a simple system like that? They just wish to collect email addresses in my view by having people register and there is no security issue as they claim as it’s very unlikely that anyone would intercept the proxy voting card.

Registrars do need regulating by the FCA in my view, as I have said before, to put a stop to this kind of nonsense.

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

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.

Voting at General Meetings, Link Asset Services and CentralNic

CentralNic (CNIC) have announced that the proxy voting forms they sent out to shareholders on the register for their forthcoming General Meeting were invalid as it omitted a signature block. So they have sent them out again. As a shareholder in the company, I spotted the error and simply wrote by name and date on the bottom of the form and signed it. That should suffice.

It is a little known fact that you don’t actually need to use the proxy form issued by the company or their registrar so long as your instructions are clear. Which prompts me to talk about the conversation I have been having with Link Asset Services (formerly Capita) about proxy voting.

I complained to them when I received a notice of an AGM by post but no paper proxy voting form. They said I needed to specifically request a paper proxy form or use their on-line portal. The latter is tedious to use and not nearly as simple when you just want to cast votes as the system used by Equiniti. It transpired that on Link’s interpretation of the Companies Act they no longer need to send out proxy voting forms as only the notice of the meeting is legally required. This appears to be correct. This is what I said in a letter to their Operations Director after the exchange of several letters:

“I will continue to submit my proxy votes by post whether you supply a form to do so or not. Where you have not supplied one, I will use my own – I attach a copy of what I will be using. If you have any objections to receiving my proxy votes in that way, please let me know. I do not see how you can legally object as it meets the requirements of the Companies Act.

I note your comments about the low percentage of shareholders who submit proxy votes, and the even lower percentage who do so in physical form [6% and 3.8% reportedly]. The latter may simply be because you and companies are now obstructing those who do not wish to vote on-line by not issuing paper proxy forms!

Overall the low percentage of shareholders voting suggests to me that registrars and companies are not doing enough to both encourage voting and making it easy for shareholders to do so. This is a major concern because shareholder voting is a key part of ensuring good corporate governance in listed companies. The Government recognized this only recently by ensuring there are binding votes on remuneration for example, but obviously if shareholders do not vote then governance is undermined.

It is of course unfortunate that there is a financial incentive for both you and companies to deter shareholder votes as they undoubtedly cost money to process, particularly if they are submitted on paper. But that is not a good justification for adopting the recent changes that Link Asset Services has adopted.

In your letter you rightly point out that registrars are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. I will be writing to them to encourage them to take on such regulation as it seems totally inappropriate to me that this area of financial markets and corporate governance is not regulated. The FCA should lay down regulations about what Registrars can and cannot do so that voting is maximized regardless of financial considerations.”

I also noted that the Link Asset Services on-line portal does not meet the requirements of the Companies Act for an “electronic address”.

I am writing to both the FCA and the BEIS department asking them to start regulating registrars so as to clarify their responsibilities under the Companies Act and so that voting is encouraged. If necessary the Companies Act should be amended to ensure voting is maximised.

So that anyone can use the generic proxy voting form I have devised I have made it available on my web site here: http://www.roliscon.com/proxy-voting.html

There is also a version you can use where you wish to instruct your stockbroker to vote your shares that are held in a nominee account. Most will do so although there may be a charge and remember that for ISA accounts they have a legal obligation to do so under the ISA regulations.

Please let me know if you have any comments on the use of these forms. If there is sufficient usage they can be made more digitally enabled in future.

Private shareholders do need to vote to make sure that your voice is heard. So please use the forms I have supplied to ensure your votes are recorded for all General Meetings.

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

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.

Hybrid AGMs and British Land

The British Land Plc (BLND) Annual General Meeting is coming up on the 17th July and I took the opportunity to review the agenda items as some are particularly interesting this year. One resolution refers to a change in the Articles which have been substantially revised. They include:

  • A new resolution to permit “hybrid” General Meetings where some members can participate electronically instead of attending in person. But “all electronic” meetings are still not permitted. This is surely a good initiative and would enable many more shareholders to “attend” such meetings. The disappointing aspect is that apparently the company has “no current intention” to use this capability.
  • A new provision is to allow the current directors to continue in office, with limited capabilities, if they are all voted off at an AGM. This is not very likely to happen, particularly when there are 13 directors on the board as in this company, although I have seen it threatened at smaller companies. Perhaps it is not an unreasonable provision. But why does any company need 13 directors? That surely makes board meetings either very long-winded or some directors are not likely to be saying much. It makes for dysfunctional board meetings. Looking at the backgrounds of some of the directors, where there is no obvious relevance to a property company, it would look like the board could be reduced in size without too much difficulty.
  • Another change is to up the limit on the total pay of non-executive directors from £600,000 to £900,000. Does that sound high? Perhaps not when the Chairman has a fee set at £385,000 per year and the non-executives get a base fee of £62,500 with other additions for sitting on various committees. Indeed the odd thing is that the total fees paid to non-executive directors were £986,000 last year. Surely that means the new limit it not enough and the limit was breached by a wide margin last year? Perhaps not because the limit excludes any additional fees for serving on committees or for acting as chairman which presumably can be set at whatever the board thinks are reasonable. In reality it’s a limit voted upon by shareholders that can be easily side-stepped. It’s surely worth asking for justification at the AGM! So I’ll be voting against the change to the Articles even though most of the revisions are sensible.

The registrar in this case is Equiniti. They sent me a paper proxy voting form but no paper Annual Report, which is somewhat annoying as reading a 186 page report on-line is not easy. I’ll have to request a paper one. But at least they provide an easy on-line voting system unlike some others I could mention – I am still on correspondence with Link Asset Services (Capita as was) on that subject.

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

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.

 

More Annoyance from Link Asset Services

I have complained before about the services from the registrar Link Asset Services that frustrate shareholders from voting – see https://roliscon.blog/2018/03/14/voting-shares-via-link-asset-services-its-infuriating/

The latest example is on another company where Link sent a paper copy of the Annual Report out, and a Notice of the AGM, but no paper proxy voting form. They suggest in a covering letter that I can either vote on-line using their “share portal” or request a paper proxy form.

For those of us who do not wish to sign up for their share portal, and just want to vote our shares (which are on the register), this is exceedingly frustrating. It’s just another way that shareholders are being discouraged from voting, and the exercise of their rights made more difficult.

I have written to the Company Secretary suggesting they fire Link Asset Services and switch to using another registrar who can provide a better service. Unless Link have a change of mind on this issue.

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

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.

Voting Shares via Link Asset Services – It’s Infuriating!

For reasons not worth explaining, I have three Personal Crest accounts for one of the companies in which I hold shares. If I had not opted in for electronic communication, I would therefore have received three identical copies of their Annual Report, three AGM Notices, and three paper proxy voting forms.

So to save the postman some effort, and the company some money, I opted out of paper communications, i.e. opted in to electronic communication, for two of the holdings, just leaving one in paper as I prefer to read annual reports on paper.

The result this year was one complete set of paper documents, and two single page letters for the others giving me the date of the meeting and pointing to a web site where it was claimed I could “log-in” to their share portal and vote. Why they could not include a paper proxy form with those letters, which would have simplified matters, I do not know. I am not registered for the Link (formerly Capita) share portal and don’t wish to do so. I just wished to vote.

The first problem was that when I typed in the company’s name to their portal software, their software could not find it. The company has an apostrophe in its name and I had to type that in to find. So that is stupidity number one.

It then insisted I needed to register – that’s stupidity number 2 when all I wanted to do was vote. Why could they not use the same system as Equiniti who have a much simpler system? I have surely spoken in the past to Capita about this issue and still they have not fixed it.

So I phoned Link and asked them to send me a paper proxy voting form. They refused to do so. The lady I spoke to said I can only vote personal crest holdings via my Crest sponsor. Even after consulting her supervisor, she insisted that was the case. They are simply wrong as I vote my Crest holdings via post all the time, and as I have pointed out they sent me a voting form for the single “paper” holding I have which I have used.

It is very obvious that they know less about voting systems and registration than I but I will be educating the next manager at Link I speak to – there should be a call back tomorrow. If they cannot figure out any other way to solve this problem, I will tell them to convert all three holdings to “paper communication”. That should please my local council who make money from selling the waste paper of residents.

This is a typical example of the obstruction faced by private shareholders when they try to vote their shares. And don’t even talk to me about the abomination that is the nominee system that defeats most people. It is simply not good enough that in the modern age that we have such unintelligent IT systems and customer relations staff who do not seem to know their job.

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

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.

Abcam, Voting and Non-Executives

I am a long-standing holder of Abcam (ABC) and have been very happy with my investment – a compound annual return of 33% p.a. since I first purchased the shares in 2006 according to Sharescope. But the notice of this year’s AGM (to be held in Cambridge as normal) has made me unhappy for other reasons.

Firstly, I tried to vote. Rather than use the paper proxy voting form (I am on the register so I get one) I thought it would be easy to do so electronically using the Equiniti ShareVote service. Even though there were no obvious instructions on the paperwork, I found the web site, entered the required three pieces of id information, and pressed submit. But it would not accept it because I have a pop-up blocker turned on. Grrr…..

Why do companies and their registrars make it so difficult to vote? They will be wasting money now because I will use the pre-paid voting card instead.

I then studied the resolutions:

  • Remuneration too high and the usual horribly complex mix of bonuses and LTIPs – but I told them that at the 2015 AGM. The only saving grace is that as an AIM company they don’t need to disclose all the information or have a vote on it, so it was good of them to do so. But I will be voting against the Remuneration Report.
  • What also attracted my attention is the presence of three non-executive directors (other than the former CEO) who are all women. One is the Chair of the Remuneration Committee so she gets a vote against for that reason alone. But all three have numerous other jobs/roles which exceed the ShareSoc guidelines and some seem to have little relevant experience of the markets in which Abcam operates. So I am voting against all three. Now I know that experienced female non-executives to fill public company boards are in short supply now that everyone wants to be “gender” balanced, so such ladies can line up numerous jobs with ease. But this is simply not good enough.

This is of course the result of the “box ticking” syndrome to keep the institutional shareholders and proxy voting advisors happy. But no non-executive director can do a good job if they have more than 4 or 5 positions.

I think I will have to attend the AGM again this year to make some of the above points.

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

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.