STOCKS TO WATCH: Cheers! Wetherspoon boss Ben Whitley gets 11% top-up
It is safe to say Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin will not be expecting a Christmas card from stock market purists this year.
The mulleted publican has long stoked investor ire by thumbing his nose at City conventions.
The pub chain’s annual meeting will take place behind closed doors this week and shareholder advisory firm Glass Lewis is riled.
Christmas spirit: Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin has long stoked investor ire by thumbing his nose at City conventions
Of chief concern is that finance director Ben Whitley, who has been with the group for two decades, is picking up a fourth consecutive annual pay rise.
Whitley is on a modest £212,000 basic salary but Glass Lewis urges investors to vote down the 11 per cent rise given Covid has left publicans staring glumly at the bottom of their glasses.
Will Whitley find reason for a festive tipple after the meeting?
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A hefty stock sale at insurer Randall & Quilter, where cofounder Ken Randall has offloaded 6.5million shares at £1.75 each – raising more than £11 million.
Randall, its executive chairman, retires next year three decades after forming the business with Alan Quilter.
Randall is a former head of regulation at Lloyd’s of London and he floated Randall & Quilter on the junior AIM exchange in 2007.
He still owns 2 per cent of the firm – enough to keep half an eye on the firm’s activities from his deckchair, no doubt.
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Images of shoppers bustling around the West End last week can’t mask the fact that Central London largely remains a ghost town.
Among the victims is commercial property landlord Shaftesbury, which has seen its shares fall 40 per cent this year as office workers and tourists desert the capital.
Investors will be looking closely at the value the business puts on its prize assets across Chinatown, Soho, Fitzrovia and Covent Garden in this week’s annual results.
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Deal-making is rife in the City and venture capitalist Ed McDermott has his pen poised.
The chief executive of FastForward Innovations, an AIM-listed tiddler, has a handful of assets including sports video gaming specialist Leap.
Now McDermott is spearheading a push into medicinal cannabis – another firm in his portfolio, Emmac, boasts cannabis farms in Portugal.
The ‘green rush’ into legal cannabis investment in North America has waned of late, but McDermott reckons his contacts and regulatory nous could help him snap up the best specialists across Europe.
He argues there’s been a growth in interest in cannabis products, chiming with a rise in veganism.
He tells me: ‘People seem to be wanting healthy alternatives not just to the way they live but the way they treat conditions.’
FastForward plans to list a cluster of its investments on the stock market next year after Covid hold-ups during 2020.
Tread carefully in this much-hyped investment class.