A few months back I blogged about the role of hedge funds and banks during takeovers and the potential for the combination to have a significant impact on the outcome. Here I just want to add a little sprinkle of detail from the current situation facin…Read more…
Getting Blackrock to do things…
Just a quick post. I increasingly find myself thinking that the focus amongst campaigners on trying to move the giant asset managers, and Blackrock in particular, represents a failure to think things through.
There are a number of overlapping aspects t…Read more…
The costs of loyalty
I’ve blogged a couple of times previously about the peculiar messaging around consumer ‘loyalty’. The repeated used of the phrase ‘loyalty penalty’, and the message that ‘loyalty doesn’t pay’ from both consumer groups and regulators feels very odd to m…Read more…
Corporate control on the cheap?
A couple of years ago, I got into the guts of the Melrose Industries hostile takeover of GKN. This deal squeaked through, despite it being opposed by GKN employees.
The bit of it that particularly interested me was the role of hedge funds doing the mer…Read more…
Meat is murder
One of the things we’ve doing at work since the pandemic hit is looking at the spread of Covid in the workplace, in particular in food processing. My colleague Alice Martin wrote a really good research note on the sector which we published back in Sept…Read more…
Working from home, working in fear
[There is a] religious element [in attitudes toward work]: the idea that dutiful submission even to meaningless work under another’s authority is a form of moral self-discipline that makes you a better person.
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[T]he morality of “you’re on my time” …Read more…
Post-democratic ESG
A theme I keep returning to is the lack or decline of democracy in the small corner of world I inhabit. A long time ago, unions in the UK ran an initiative called the Campaign for Pension Fund Democracy which sought to give pension scheme members great…Read more…
Boohoo in doo-doo
Online retailer Boohoo is in the news for a lot of bad reasons. Allegations of poor working practices in supplier factories, which in turn are linked to a Covid outbreak in Leicester, come after news its had created a new incentive scheme for directors…Read more…
Politics isn’t static
Just a quick post in response to some claims I’ve seen re-emerge about the wisdom of pitching to the centre in politics. Warning: I’m obviously on the Left, so have strong priors. But I do find the way this is usually put across a bit unthinking.
To r…Read more…
Stakeholder capitalism, not missionary capitalism
This is an unusual book. I struggle to place it politically, since it both strongly advocates both reasserting the voice of the working class in politics and society, alongside quite conservative positions on issues like immigration. According to Wikip…Read more…
Concentration, alignment and pre-distribution
Like most people, I’m not really clear at what stage we are in the Covid-19 outbreak. Confused briefing to the papers (and a new strap line that doesn’t include “Stay Home”) suggests to me that in general the government *is* easing the lockdown de fact…Read more…
Crisis pressure points
Clearly there are areas where the Covid-19 shutdown is going to have a bigger impact than others.
I won’t bother rehashing stories about what’s happening to retailers etc. but there are a few things that I think are worth clocking from the past week. …Read more…
Capitalism: down with the sickness
I’m just a humble labour & corpgov wonk, so most of the time the kinds of things that interest me are buried in the business pages. But it feels like, as with the financial crisis, questions about who controls businesses and how, and in whose inter…Read more…
In defence of the Behavioural Insights Team
I’ve seen something a bit odd on twitter over the past few days – people from various bits of the Left having a dig at the involvement of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) in the government’s response to the Coronavirus outbreak. I’ve no dog in …Read more…
Fluttery votes
Here’s the list of Paddy Power Betfair (now Flutter) major shareholders disclosed in last year’s annual report. Capital Group is reported as having 5.9%, or 4.6m shares at 5 March 2019. Of these almost 3.9% are accounted for by the EuroPacific fund.
Against transparency!
The more time I spend looking at disclosures from investors, the less sense a lot of it makes to me. I’ve blogged quite a bit about meaningless Stewardship Code reporting, with dozens of hedge / boutique funds using exactly the same blurb. We are about…Read more…
NMC voting turnout
Right… here’s what we can see in the NMC meeting results. The first graph just sets out what NMC reports. So there is a headline total voting turnout for all meeting and at AGMs from 2015 I can also split out the insider and minority shareholder turn…Read more…
How seriously do hedge funds voting disclosure?
Not seriously, I would argue. The principle that investors should disclose their voting records is pretty well established now, but we still get this cut & paste stuff justify not doing so.
More NMC stuff
A quick look at disclosures for one of NMC’s largest shareholders, Wellington. Last Friday there was an RNS that announced that it held a bit over 10m shares, but in a note said it didn’t have voting discretion for 1.35m of them (13.5%).
Then on Mond…Read more…
NMC Health voting rights
I spent a bit of Sunday trawling through NMC annual reports and RNS announcements. If you look at the disclosed shareholders in the annual reports you can figure out the holdings of the controlling shareholders. If you then look at the AGM results you …Read more…