Investors want to ban ‘junk’ companies from London; Call for changes after poor treatment of minority shareholders at Bumi and ENRC

Investors want to ban ‘junk’ companies from London

Call for changes after poor treatment of minority shareholders at Bumi and ENRC

By Louise Armitstead

8:15PM BST 31 May 2014

A group of powerful institutional investors has demanded that City regulators tighten the UK’s listing rules to ban sub-standard foreign companies floating in London.

In the wake of concerns over the treatment of minority shareholders at a number of companies, including Bumi, the investors demanded changes in the way overseas companies are allowed to list on the London Stock Exchange.

The Telegraph has learnt that the Association of British Insurers (ABI), which represents the country’s largest blue chip investors and pension funds, led a delegation of institutional investors to a meeting at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) 10 days ago to call for better protection for shareholders from “junk companies”.

“We need the London market to be the preserve of quality companies not junk companies,” one source said. “At the moment the rules allow investment banks to bring to market companies, often from abroad, without proper standards of quality or corporate governance. Investors, particularly index trackers, are extremely vulnerable.”

The meeting came just a week after the UK Listing Authority (UKLA), which sits within the FCA, issued new rules on controlled companies to protect investors in companies with a dominant shareholder. The rules were introduced after recent stockmarket scandals at Bumi, since renamed Asia Resource Minerals; Essar Energy and ENRC. All three were dominated by a few big shareholders who were able to act in their own interests without reference to smaller institutions. They have since been delisted, leaving investors with substantial losses.

Bumi was perhaps the most high-profile. The company was originally listed as Vallar, an institutionally-backed cash shell brought to the market by Nat Rothschild, into which was reversed a series of Indonesian resource assets owned by the Bakrie family. Investors ended up in a vehicle which was 43pc controlled by a concert party made up of the Bakrie family, along with businessman Rosan Roeslani and Bumi’s chairman Samin Tan.

Renamed Asia Resource Minerals’ shares, worth close to £14 at their peak in May 2011, closed at 198.25p on Friday night.

At ENRC, the company’s three founding Kazakh shareholders — who controlled 44pc of the equity — last year took the company private for £3bn, less than half of what it was worth when it floated in 2007.

And Essar Energy, which was floated at 420p a share in April 2010 — giving it a valuation of £5.4bn — is in the process of being delisted by controlling shareholder Essar Global for 70p.

The rules put in place earlier this month were described by the FCA as a “package of measures designed to strengthen minority shareholder rights and protections where they are at risk of being abused”. The changes followed a three-month consultation.

However, at the recent meeting, Robert Hingley, director of investment affairs at the ABI, which represents investors with £1.8 trillion in assets, told regulators that the rule changes had not addressed their concerns.

A source said: “The UK listing regime does not take into account the end users — that is, investors. It is far too skewed towards the interests of investment banks that make millions bringing these companies to market and then don’t suffer the consequences. There need to be proper protections for investors to block some of these companies coming to market.”

The ABI’s position is thought to be backed by a raft of investors including Legal & General and the Universities Superannuation Scheme.

Shareholders are expected to push the regulators to reinstate a UKLA advisory panel that includes big institutions.