Good morning! I attended ShareSoc's seminar on improving shareholder rights last night, and must say what a fantastic event it was - ShareSoc is really pulling out all the stops on this, and organised a highly professional meeting with some big name speakers such as Lord John Lee, Michael Kempe of Capita, Professor John Kay (of the Kay Review), and four others. Everyone made good points, and it seems to me that we now have the ear of policy-makers (a lady from the Govt BIS Dept was there too) and everyone is pulling in the same direction - i.e. it is recognised that the nominee a/c system currently disenfranchises small shareholders, and that an electronic system is long overdue, which will allow us all to be directly listed on the shareholder register - thus no more hassle with letters of representation for AGMs, but most importantly shareholders will now be able to stop errant management in their tracks by sacking them more easily, voting down excessive remuneration packages, etc.

Some people say, well we can do that already, or I don't invest in companies where management abuse their positions, etc. However, in my view some company management get away with murder because there is nothing to stop them - they know that a large part of the shareholder list can't or won't vote. As I said yesterday, an absentee shareholder base that is disenfranchised has created a greedy, self-serving management class. I am really looking forward to changes in the rules that will give shareholders teeth again. Sadly, we will have to wait years for these changes, I think 2025 was mentioned. Surely reform can happen more quickly?

To view ShareSoc's proposals on shareholder democracy, please see their publication here. Also there is a petition for signature here.


Connect (LON:CNCT)

Share price: 162p
No. shares: 189.3m
Market Cap: £306.7m

Preliminary results - for the year ended 31 Aug 2014 are out today. They look quite good. This is a distributor of newspapers & magazines, that has also branched out into other areas.

Turnover and profit are both flat against last year, at £1.8bn and £50m respectively.

What they call underlying EPS is up 2.8% at 21.7p.

Valuation - it looks attractively priced on a PER basis, which is a PER of only 7.5.

However, on digging a bit deeper, the valuation is low…

Unlock the rest of this article with a 14 day trial

Already have an account?
Login here