The swish estate agency has a list of tricky issues to negotiate at its annual meeting - not least its falling share price. Oh, and a stagnant property market
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| Foxtons: 400 followers on Twitter. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA |
Take the official Twitter account of the irksome estate agency Foxtons, for instance, which possesses a mighty 400 followers and drones on about the major housing topics de nos jours, such as: “Do you know what it takes to be a landlord?” (we might venture a guess).
By comparison, the @AvoidFoxtons account is proving far more popular, but the estate agent will get a chance to get its official message across this week, when it holds its annual meeting.
Still, the gathering comes as other irritating hecklers are also shouting from the sidelines. The company’s shares have lost about 30% of their value in the past 12 months, while fresh news from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) last week suggested that the UK housing market is continuing to slow down, with falling property sales and “stagnant” buyer demand contributing to one of the most downbeat reports since the financial crash. Oh – and obviously there is also the chance of a row with shareholders over executive pay.
So will anybody take any notice of Foxtons’s excuses for its list of current challenges? Possibly – although sympathisers may be less numerous than its collection of Twitter followers.
Package of trouble at Royal Mail
This week, Royal Mail Group is promising to hold its annual general meeting – although we’d all be wise to wait and see if it follows through with that pledge. The company is fast developing a reputation for not always sticking exactly to its word.
You will recall how there is currently an almighty row between the company and some staff about efforts to wriggle out of a defined benefit pension scheme – which pays out to employees based on years of service with either a career average or final salary.
They are nice pensions to have, but are now supposedly unaffordable, unless, as one City wag puts it, scores of workers do the collegiate thing and die more quickly. All of which explains why Royal Mail stopped new staff joining the scheme nine years ago.
Anyway, the company is now trying to cut the benefits to its employees who were already enrolled in the scheme, hence the threat of industrial action.
As any A-level business student will tell you, pensions are wages deferred and if Royal Mail does not deliver, it’s conceptually no different from cutting salaries. Expect that point to be made at this week’s AGM – assuming Royal Mail doesn’t try to sidestep that too.
Black horse rides off to private sector
Just as the concept of state-owned industries is thrust back into the news agenda with the drafting of the Labour manifesto, there comes a potentially symbolic moment when the UK government finally withdraws from one of its most infamous investments.
The government’s investment holding company, UKFI, has been selling down its once-43% stake in Lloyds Banking Group for months. We have now got to the point where, we are so insignificant on the share register that dashing boss António Horta-Osório might treat us as he does members of the paparazzi while on a foreign business trip – and not even notice we’re hanging around.
Anyway, this week is expected to be the moment when our now 0.25% holding finally goes to zero, so expect crowing by the Conservative party about how Lloyds has been nursed back into the private sector on its watch (and, possibly, Horta-Osório saying he’s off).
Apparently we have all made around £500m out of owning a stake in the bank – which sounds quite good, although that might be misleading.
Last week the Financial Times worked out that if we had we stuck our £20.3bn stake into Lloyds’ highest-paying instant access account, we’d have scooped £2.9bn in interest.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/14/foxtons-image-sympathetic-updating
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