Member Info for Richox

Iain Conn received a 44% rise in his pay in 2018 to £2.4m. His pay rose from £1.7m in 2017 because he did not receive a bonus that year, while in 2016 he received £4m. That's what we shareholders voted for. Any chance that he'll feel he should give some back?

You've only got to look at Aviva's 30 year SP history to see why people say if you can't think of anything else to short then short Aviva.

That's what it's been doing since the late 1980s when it was around £8 per share. It's just one of those shares.

BT has spent a huge amount of money on a TV/web advertising campaign that turns out to be misjudged and potentially offensive. Sure they have apologised, but shoddy communication does not help their reputation or indeed their share price.

Any privatised organisation that is regulated over and above normal trading standards has never really been privatised. Ofcom's job has always been to force BT's prices down as low as possible. By forcing the major player's prices down, prices throughout the industry are kept down. Privatisation was just a governmenmt wheeze to raise moneyand escape any possible blame for disasters. Claiming efficiency improvements was trumped up populist propaganda that was irrationally taken in without question. Setting up regulators with the power to interfere with commercial operations additionally created a break on inflation and a bit of job creation. A review is long overdue.

Talk about rose tinted spectacles! The price was 204.25 when Bkbkkk posted at 13.06 on Saturday. Now at 17.45 on Tuesday it's 196.00p and the FTSE has risen today, albeit only by 8 poitns. That's an 8.25 p drop in my book.

A 8p drop for a 4.6p dividend does not answer banaman's question.

The problem with these companies is that they are inappropriately regulated. The government through the regulators makes sure they only just survive. They were never truely privatised. HMG invented a mechanism to help control inflation by ensuring prices across the sector are minimised by squeezing the whales. Regulators are fine if they only control standards, but are dangerous when they also seek to control profitability. The regulators are far from independent of HMG. HMG sold public assets back to the public, and retained financial influence whilst avoiding responsibility for disasters and difficulties. Small companies that can cherry pick their business can compete, but will suffer from the regulator effect if they try to grow. Meanwhile the BODs extract whatever they can from their companies because they have been given freedom to do so. The worst of state control combined with the worst of capitalism. Is it any surprise that these companies are being shunned by the market.

There's only one time the only way is up, and that's when you hit zero.

Just because you wouldn't buy them does not mean you should sell them.

Any company can go bust.

HMG sold off its stake in BT a few years after privatisation at about £11 a share and then set about ensuring that BT did little more than to survive. The theory was that if BT is held at the limit of survival then prices in the industry will be minimised, helping to keep inflation down. Privatisation was just a con, selling assets that the people owned back to the people while keeping control of them but distancing themselves from any poor performance flack. Stay well away from any privatised stock.

Jatw is quite right. Try going back to the 1990s.

Between Jan 1998 and Jan 2002 the SP was above 750, peaking at 1265 in spring 1998. It was also above 800 in early 2006 and early 2007. It dropped down to 200 during the crash, but rebounded to around 400 in 2010. It has done very little since. It is still well below the 500 it was in 1990 so think 30 years rather than 10.

Long term holders can.

The ceo has changed a few times, the company name has changed a few times, but the SP is still where it was 30 years ago. Situation normal for Aviva.

That's more than my gross lifetime's earnings plus my son's gross lifetime's earnings plus what my grandson has earned in his life to date, "earned" by Conn each and every year. Something wrong here.

Apart from making their executives obscenely wealthy, privatisation has been of no benefit to the previously nationalised companies on your list, or to their customers.

There was vocal criticism of Conn's appointment 5 years ago after BP had written him off. Since then he's overseen a destruction of CNA shareholder value of over 50% and taken tens of millions out of the company in remuneration. Can anyone think of anything positive he has achieved? Don't be dazzled by current yield figures, we are heading for a divi cut and an SP below 100p. Time to get out and think about returning when Conn has gone.

BODs changed because they realised how much they can pay themselves through bonuses, long term incentive plans, perks, pensions, use of company accounts, golden cufflinks, dodgy share buy back schemes etc and focused on these instead of on corporate wellbeing and shareholder returns. Their real priorities are 1) manipulating their personal performance targets, 2) searching out positive spin, 3) finding something else to blame when things go wrong, and 4) producing voluminous unintelligible glossy annual reports full of garbage, telling anyone who bothers to read them what a wonderful job they are doing regardless of how the company is performing.

Typical justification: "in our globalised environment we must recruit world class personnel and to do so must offer commensurate remuneration packages." Absolute rubbish!! Feeding the greedy only makes them greedier and diverts their energies. Those on the gravy train fight tooth and nail to keep their seats.

Whenever anything like this happens huge wads of corporate funds are handed over to so called professionals, there's a loss of shareholder value, and executive bonuses increase. Deckchairs and Titanic comes to mind.