[Martin Silman]

Stephen, Cannot argue about the institutional control and lack of governance on the part of fund managers, that is another insurmountable problem on our collective ‘To Do’ list. However, I would say the ‘activist investor’ and ‘small investor’ seems to be much more influential under the US system. I voted shares for PepsiCo and Lockheed Martin this week and those, just like all the others I have seen recently, had motions from small shareholders asking for more control or transparency or objecting to remuneration or whatever. They may usually not get sufficient votes to be enacted, but they always cause the relevant boards to discuss them and to draft reasons why they are against it, etc which must influence their thinking going forward a tiny bit and if it does, that is better than the UK situation.

[Martin Silman]

Stephen, Am guessing this thread provided the seed for today’s DL Update where you outline the benefits of ISA’s. I agree with your logic throughout but just wanted to comment on the concept of nominee holdings.

I have an account denominated in US $ with one of the US trading platforms and use that to buy stocks in various US companies – the default there is that every shareholder is ‘a shareholder’ and gets full voting rights and is encouraged to use them whether they have paper shares or trade through an online broker or platform. They all seem to use proxyvote.com – you get emailed a ‘control number’, you go to proxyvote.com and enter it, then you have full access to all of the documents and materials associated with the AGM, EGM or whatever and can vote on every motion.

It would be incredibly easy for any of the UK platforms to offer this but they all see it as an overhead and unfortunately, very few people seem interested in taking an active role in the companies we own, yet we all complain about the poor governance, exorbitant executive salaries and stupid share buybacks which result from this lack of involvement.

Is it just me or do others have a similar view? I buy shares for the long term and as a result, care about the companies I own

[Martin Silman]

Think most of my thoughts have been stated above, but just to add to the consensus – I lost £6,500 last year from my ‘Dividend Letter’ bucket due to CLLN going under, yet that bucket still grew 6% overall last year. Additionally, I have another bucket where I actively buy and sell small companies and many times I have set a stop loss, often at 30% below current value, automatically sold when the price dropped and then found myself buying back in at a much higher price 2-3 months later – so most of the time, staying invested even in that marketplace is the better strategy. When you are restricting yourself to Dividend Letter selections it is even more true, though I tend to occasionally replace selections from earlier HYP’s with the current selection for that industry if and when they drop to HLD and prospects don’t look good in the medium term (not that you can tell but…)

So keep up the good work Stephen.

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