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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Dividend trades and voting
Obviously, I’ve not been blogging much lately, but something I’ve been spending a bit of time looking at is dividend arbitrage. In it its most well-known version, this is the practice of shifting stock around the ex dividend in order minimise tax payab…Read more…
Monopoly industries, monopoly owners
One of of the things I find myself spending time reading and thinking about lately is the interaction between concentration of companies (or oligopoly) within industries, and concentration of ownership of those same companies.
There have been a number…Read more…
Corporate governance, again
There have been a few developments over the past week or two that play into the argument I’ve been making that 1990s-style corporate governance is come under serious pressure to change.
1. Polling from the resolutely centrist Progressive Cen…Read more…
The loyalty ‘penalty’
A few months back I blogged some initial thoughts about the idea of loyalty. To recap, I find it jarring that various bodies increasingly try and encourage us to be disloyal. While I get that it’s silly to be ‘loyal’ to a utility provider (or insert yo…Read more…
Asset managers and stakeholders
There’s a proliferation of comment pieces from asset managers lately seeking to demonstrate that they “get it” when it comes to lack of trust in business and finance. A lot of these simply re-tread the same ground, with more exhortations to more stewar…Read more…
Infrastructure investment politics
A couple of stories caught my eye over the last few days, both relating to the ownership of infrastructure.
The first piece is from the FT and looks at the dividends paid to the owners of the UK’s airports. This contrasts the amounts paid to sharehol…Read more…
Kier Group ownership changes
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Interserve / Kier Group short selling etc
Following on from Kier Group (and Carillion, of course) it looks like Interserve is facing some serious financial pressure. According to the FT there are “rescue” talks underway that involve a debt for equity swap that would largely wipe out existing s…Read more…
Kier Group in trouble
Kier Group’s shares took a nosedive on Friday afternoon, after the company announced a £250m rights issue intended to pay down its debt. The background to this, according to Kier Group, is a mixture of lenders pulling back from the construction sector,…Read more…
Meade on property
This seems pretty relevant today – a small snippet from Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property that addresses the need to think about ownership of property in addition to taxation when looking at inequality.
“(i) If, in the automated world…Read more…
Labour’s mini Meidner plan
It’s been an interesting day for those of us on the Left with an interest in issues of governance and ownership. At Labour conference it has been announced that a future Labour government would both mandate that workers form a third of the board o…Read more…
Ownership and control
Here’s something I wrote for work…
Ownership and control
If you’re a delivery driver whose movements are monitored remotely, or doing gig work through a platform like Uber or Deliveroo, you’re already seeing the impact of technology on work. Million…Read more…
Another snippet on Inmarsat takeover and hedge funds
Just to keep this updated, there are a lot of regulatory disclosures being fired out by Inmarsat now. So I’m just keeping track of the hedge fund related ones.
Marshall Wace, which is very active on the short side in the UK, now has a 2.38% long posit…Read more…
Inmarsat: in come the hedge funds
At the back end of last week the UK-listed telecoms business Inmarsat revealed that it has been approached by US-listed Echostar Corporation about a potential takeover, which it knocked back.
As a result of the offer, a different regulatory disclosure…Read more…