Member Info for expatwelsh

Looks like the union trolls are out again.

Strike pay is also tax free as HMRC says payments are not earnings……..even though they are income……..and the name of the tax is Income Tax ??

Is an imposition now defined as something one doesn’t agree with?

Hi Fleccy, I hadn’t realised that all holdings through a broker were on the register under their name. I suspect you’ve mentioned the culprit though,I only use this site Trustnet and Simply Wall Street referencing BT so probably time to update passwords. I remain perplexed as to the payoff for the people who called me but they’re organised for a reason. Interested to see if any of the other users on this board get a call from Jessica B.

Hi Ww,I also hold my shares through one of the large platforms and can’t fathom the scam.However they knew I held shares ,they knew my name and they were trying to get information and when challenged with fact they hung up. In my experience if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s normally a duck :-)

Just a warning to watch out for some rip off merchants apparently targeting BT shareholders in this time of potential bids.

I've just had a call from a person calling themselves Jessica Brown apparently representing a firm called Powell Associates.

My number is ex directory so who knows how they got my number but she said that I had been contacted because I am a BT shareholder.

She said her firm was representing a (UK) multi national mounting a hostile bid for BT having secured support from institutions covering 43% of shares issued and was making a first come first served offer to individual investors with a minimum price of £5 and maximum of £15 to secure the remaining 8%..

She said the precise detail of any offer would be available when I had given an e-mail address to receive details of the offer and in return provided details of my holdings for "verification".

When I pointed out that what she proposed didn't appear to comply with Stock exchange take over rules she hung up on me.

I must assume that they accessed my name from the shareholder register so I'm sure they are trying this on to hundreds or thousands of investors with ,I presume, the objective of somehow gathering enough information on a shareholding and shareholder to somehow con a third party into paying them for shares that they don't actually own.

I don't have a clue exactly what is going on but I do smell a large Rat !!

I’m with Interactive Investor came through a couple of days back.

Inflation plus 3.9 % is built into customers contracts ,can’t see why the papers think it’s News.

Pokerchips, True words about greed etc etc and I guess it’s those unquantifiable things that explain why toothpaste etc is judged to be worth a rating of twice the earnings multiple than boring old BT. If it was easy we’d all be rich!!

Thanks Pokerchips,
Yes of course they are two different things but at any given time the share price and consequently the Market Cap reflects the Markets perception of the balance of present and potential value of the company. In this case the market is presently valuing the present and potential value of BT at 18 billion and is apparently accepting that a fair assessment of the present and potential value of GSK consumer division at £50 plus billion in as much as that’s apparently their first offer so I think the question is reasonable . I agree though that should an offer ever be made for BT it would hopefully be at a much higher level than todays price which suggests the market today is not being entirely rational.

A question...........Unilever's bid for GSK's toothpaste to Headache pills business values it at around 20 times earnings before tax. and the market doesn't seem to think that is too unreasonable. BT the provider of UK critical Infrastructure that is essential to modern life is valued at not much more than half that.
How does this happen? It's not just about pension deficits and debt levels.
Happy to hear if there is a rational explanation for the difference between BT's £18 Bill Market Cap and the range of £50 to £60 Bill that's apparently a fair value for a basket of consumer brands.

Also thanks to Z

Thanks Fleccy, looks like a bit of reading to do!! So the answer is it’s very difficult to see a way through to a total sell off . I guess it’s then equally difficult to sell a share as it would be a share of what? The answer to that would only be achieved by covering all the bases that you highlight which if achievable would lead full circle back to a potential complete sale. Whatever the possibilities it would take a couple of years to find a solution so I guess that tends to rule out some of the PE options as they seem to look for quicker results. Thanks for the explanation.

I should have said that I’m not advocating a spin off but think all possible options remain possible until something else becomes reality.

Z, can you explain why you remain convinced that assets could not be assigned from BT to OR to facilitate a sale. You obviously have some knowledge of BT but I can’t see any reason at all why this couldn’t happen if BT wished to make it happen.What suits when OR is a part of BT isn’t necessarily relevant if BT decided to sell asset,installation,operations and support as one package. Am I missing something that you could explain?

And explain how the price goes down 5% when the former exceed the latter.

Fair comment on the National asset reference although it wasn’t mine but the un named Whitehall source mentioned in rock8 s earlier post on a Daily Mail article. If the person or persons with the money step up to take increased or total control in the coming months there will be wailing from all over about both your security issues and no doubt also because U.K. Crown Jewels are being sold off. The funny thing is the sources of much of the wailing will be the same as much of the rubbishing of BT in recent years. I still think the new act giving Ministers the right to intervene was planned to prevent Chinese buyers with the argument against EU or USA suitors being harder to justify. Time will tell and we will all no doubt be wrong in our forecasts to some extent but hopefully the direction will still be upwards.

The key words are “ if it poses a risk to national security” .
Wouldn’t it be hard to say a buyer from amongst our friends in the EU or from the USA represented such a risk?
If BT was truly seen in the market as a key national asset it wouldn’t be undervalued in the market to the extent it is.
if things get to a government intervention it will be an interesting court case when the buyer requests a judicial review of the intervention.

Interested to see the debate on whether Openreach has assets or not. Surely the expectation must be that In the event a sale of OR was to be considered BT could and would assign whatever part of it’s asset base it considered appropriate to be part of that sale. The current allocation of assets is appropriate for the existing business but would be changed to facilitate a profitable sale. It may be complex to do so but money is a powerful incentive. I don’t have the intimate knowledge of BT that many on this board possess but have seen many businesses carved up in different ways to suit the latest business requirements. Political considerations aside why should this case be any different?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/as-french-billionaire-stalks-britains-biggest-telecoms-group-private-equity-firms-size-up-bt-cable-arm-sending-its-value-rocketing-to-%c2%a340bn/ar-AARcLoI?ocid=msedgdhp