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…
Star Trek: The Paper Clip Maximiser
One of the books I really enjoyed recently was The AI Does Not Hate You by Tom Chivers. It’s sorta more about the people who think about AI, and how they think about it, and it was basically right up my street.
There’s a bit early on where he describe…Read more…
TR1 tales at NMC
A few more funky bits and pieces in the entrails of NMC Health’s filings…
A couple of banks facilitating stuff for clients presumably. In the Morgan Stanley case it’s an equity swap. Quite interested in who would want an NMC equity swap at this poin…Read more…
FTSE100 corporate governance failure
UPDATED: Very useful info from Chris Hodge added – the ownership disclosure requirements are weaker for non-UK issuers.
It’s not surprising, given the market turmoil, that the crisis at NMC Health has attracted less attention than it would norma…Read more…
Another Flutter
I’m finding this mildly mesmerising. just Capital’s long position (based on TR1 disclosures) versus the total *public* short in Flutter (based on the FCA register).
A little Flutter
Just a chart. Short positions plus TR1 announced positions in Flutter Entertainment from start of October to Friday. The two trend lines are for the short position (lower line) and Capital Group’s position (upper line). Bear in mind there are only a fe…Read more…
Globalisation and small c conservatism
“He… told us we had to go straight to the Celtic Manor in Newport – 50 miles away – by five o’clock to sign the documents and British Coal executives would be flying down to meet us by helicopter. Even I could not believe this. They had won but they wa…Read more…