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I hadn't meant to suggest anything disreputable about that particular firm, others who lend out, or stock-lending in general; it's a common practice. FCA-regulated firms. Some do a lot of it, some choose not to lend out. I was merely outlining the mechanics of how delays in receiving dividends might come about; there's more admin involved and hands to pass between.
A platform going bust, UK that is, their customers would be covered via FSCS within the limits of that scheme.
A share-borrower going bust - the share lender will have taken collateral from borrower, and the platform remains in duty to its customers first and foremost, so if the shares lent are not returned as per contract or collateral was insufficient for instance, those are issues for the platform to sort out. Freetrade's t&c states the collateral taken is of higher quality/value than the shares lent, implying their assurance to their customers, and I would assume they assess the quality of the borrower in the first place. Large institutions borrow, it's not an uncommon practice for shorting.
I was surprised to see mine in my uninvested cash account on Sunday night! The platform I'm using for lgen holds shares as nominee, and does not do stock lending, and therefore has no waiting time to pass on the dividends. With no stock lending, their customers remain beneficial owners of the shares.
This differs from platforms who DO do stock lending. Freetrade for instance operates entirely on that business model; outlined in its t&c: shares are not retained in the platform's nominee ownership whilst 'lent out', and customers do not remain beneficial owners. Therefore the dividends are directly received by the borrowers, and have to be passed onto the platform, before then being further passed on to customers. Hence the delays in dividend receipt people are experiencing. That's my guess; timely receipt depends on the platform we are using and the ownership chain of the shares.
Welcome. I embarked last week at slightly higher SP. Had finger on the buy button at today's close to improve my average, but my platform blanked my screen and suggested I clear cookies. I don't hold with happenstances giving me a sign, but Reuters does today write "Aviva Plc tumbled 3.3% after the asset manager reported subdued quarterly net flows to its wealth arm, citing market volatility". I'd already taken a looming possibly one-year recession into account when deciding to buy to hold, but haven't told my spouse as I don't want to wobble !
Re. MNG loss - is partially explained in the Accounts by "non-cash losses in the fair value of the surplus assets in our annuity portfolio" and by "derivatives used to hedge the Solvency II balance sheet caused by increasing yields".
The Truss-era budget and the ensuing meltdown in bond values, but which haven't recovered due to base rate increases. The effects won't be reversed until base rates start to come down globally.
Gnator - don't let me put you or any other reader completely off looking further into Preference Shares - they are a favourite of Warren Buffet after all; they call them 'Preferred Stock' in America.
Aviva themselves have 2 preference shares, A and B, plus the old 2 from General Accident A and B, Gen Acc later became an acquisition of Aviva - all with high-ish yields. There are several others. Ecclesiastical is one. Some banks.
As always, research & diversification. Best Wishes
A 'correction' reflecting after hours trading previous night, probably. Yesterday it rose about 4% - today is down about 4%. Similar movements between one day and the next have happened a few times in past 24 months; a similar rise one day and correcting back down the next day. Share price otherwise seems back to a flat of 128 since end of April. There's a website showing a summary of daily trade history; if it gets 28 trades as it did yesterday it must be considered busy! otherwise has half that number or single digits. Institutional trades mainly would be my guess, going by trade values. I wonder how many small retail pref holders there are.
p.s. have you any opinion on what might happen with regard to the 2026 regulatory capital changes?
NTEA are a different sort of share than you might have traded or read about to date; they are Preference Shares. Northern Electric don't have any Ordinary Shares listed on stock exchanges, because they are 100% owned by its parent company Berkshire Hathaway, a Warren Buffet company. There are less than 112million preference shares issued, I estimated from annual accounts, so the market in them is really small. The market in preference shares of any company is small in any case, so a market maker prepared to deal in them would either be maybe a specialist investment intermediary or already have a deal lined up for the other side of the trade, be it buy or sell. That small market means there is a wide Bid/Ask spread, and as you found the Ask price is set quite high. This situation might present you a problem if you wanted to sell, because obviously straight away the Bid price would show a paper loss of nearly one year's worth of the 'dividend', and the share price is not one which is designed for growth, it was designed to pay preferential shareholders as part of a shareholder package set up soon after privatisation, in 1995. Berkshire Hathaway bought the company some time after, but kept the share arrangement in place.
That brings me to the 'steady 6% dividend' you must have read in the stats; these NTEA preference shares pay a fixed interest of 8.061p per share, paid half-yearly. So, yes, on present share price you could look to achieve circa 6%. I say it's a fixed interest rate, but actually these NTEA preference shares are cumulative, which means that should a company not have sufficient distributable profits one year, they do not have to pay the 8.061p interest, they can hold on to capital and pay the due sum at a later date. That's the definition of cumulative preference shares, but in fact in their history I don't think there has ever been a time the distribution has not been paid out. Nobody knows the future of course. Risks inherent in the industry include regulatory fines which Ofgem might apply, adverse weather substantially increasing costs of supply line repairs, that sort of thing, and of course should the current parent company decide to sell then there's a great unknown as to what any new purchaser would do with the company. The preference shares could be redeemed for instance, and that would be at the original sum set out in prospectus; I read it was 1p plus 99p premium, making £1 for each of your shares. They don't have to buy them back at market price or give you what you paid for them. I'm not saying this situation is imminent or likely to happen, but it might, therefore you should read up on the differences between Ord Shares and Preference Shares. Of course on the upside, preference shares do give priority above ordinary shareholders in the event of insolvency, but if it were ever to come to that for a utility company our world would be in dire straits.
Finally, I haven't researched this company; you should dig deeper. HTH.
Banking Crisis changes things somewhat - hope I'm wrong, can only remain hopeful as can do nowt else - but we could yet see our cherished announced dividend being pulled last minute again, as in 2020, because Regulators take a dim view of billions in cash outflow to shareholders when liquidity isn't certain over the next year, or even the next month. Their view is of course that the banks should provide their own liquidity, not have it provided by the central bank. Makes logical sense, but my little pocket will suffer.
Clued - re. UBS taking over CS and the associated SNB 'backup', that nowhere near makes this over. "The Central Banks of UK, Canada, Japan, USA, Switzerland, and European Central Bank have jointly announced tonight they would enhance liquidity provision via new standing U.S. Dollar liquidity swap lines ... the Bank of England said it would hold the first of its new, daily seven-day maturity repo operations, starting 08:15 Monday morning - this is part of a global central bank response to the crisis at Credit Suisse". This is happening irrespective of UBS announcing takeover of CS, because that on its own would not have calmed tomorrow's market responses.
Your suggestion of banks limiting withdrawals? - it could never in any case be applied at same time and globally, there are no mechanisms of global co-operation in place, some parts of the world are in conflict and that's not just the Russian situation, and there's the new modern spanner in the works of digital coin. Economies would be at standstill if banks or government limited withdrawals, (c.f. covid-lockdown-induced economic suppression took how long to recover?), and the subsequent easing of restrictions would result in bigger bank runs than would otherwise have occurred as all trust in the system would be gone and money would be removed the millisecond depositors could do so. Don't forget how small/insignificant people such as us are; it's the giant players who keep economies moving. Bank transactions cannot be suppressed; trillions transact by the minute, wages and normal business payments as well as markets trading. As for shorters, yep, problematic.
We could yet see our cherished announced dividend being pulled last minute again, as in 2020; the regulators take a dim view of billions in cash outflow when liquidity isn't certain over the next year.