TIMES BULLETIN8 Oct 2019 10:18
Online shareholder chat forums are a “disgrace” and should be shut down, the boss of Sirius Minerals has claimed.
Chris Fraser said that the Financial Conduct Authority should investigate the bulletin boards where retail shareholders in Sirius and other companies discuss their investments.
Sirius has about 85,000 retail shareholders, some of whom have said that they have invested life savings in the North Yorkshire fertiliser mine developer.
“No investment adviser with a licence would tell you to do that,” Mr Fraser, Sirius’s chief executive, said, suggesting that some had been poorly advised after turning to the online forums. “They have these people sitting in their basements in their sweatpants, giving them investment advice — unregulated, unlicensed — and people follow them.”
The most prominent online…