Building materials group CRH, support services firm DCC and healthcare business Mediclinic are all like a self-effacing investment banker. Even in the City, very few people have ever heard of any of them.
That’s despite the trio of companies being among the largest in the land. All three are sizeable enough to be listed in the FTSE 100, with CRH the best known and worth more than £20bn.
The other two are almost totally anonymous, however, despite being valued at more than £5bn each. Yet a pretender to their throne of the largest company you’ve never heard of makes a mark this week.
Tomorrow is the day of the FTSE 100 reshuffle, and while Travis Perkins and Polymetal International are being relegated, they will be replaced by packaging firm Smurfit Kappa Group and a little-known healthcare company called ConvaTec Group.
The latter supplies a range of products in areas such as skincare, “wound care” and “urological drainage” – which predictably prompts much tittering in the Square Mile (“they are literally taking the piss”).
Still, ConvaTec might yet make a name for itself. It only floated in October but the shares have risen by about 6% since and its chairman is Sir Christopher Gent – who is well known in the City to many folk (of a certain age).
Tis the season for a poorly attended AGM
What do Gfinity, Syqic, Uvenco UK and Mosman Oil and Gas all have in common? Well, apart from them being AIM-listed companies you’ve probably never heard of, all four have conveniently scheduled their annual general meeting this week when their shareholders’ attentions have the potential for drifting elsewhere.
That looks quite convenient as shares in each of them have fallen this year, so expect all the AGM votes to have been shoved in with the Christmas mail, rather than anyone actually showing up at the venues to question the management.
Still, if anyone does bother to attend then there might be some fun to be had. Trading in Syqic shares, for instance, has been suspended because it hasn’t yet managed to publish audited report and accounts for last year. The group said in November that they would remain suspended “due to the qualified audit opinion on the financial statements ... and emphasis about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern being dependent on, inter alia, the collection of trade receivables and the ability to raise future funds”. Fun to be had, then – if you can make the meeting.
Ho ho ho! It’s the bailiffs
Quick! Hide! Yes, the banging on the door is the cheery yuletide sound of the once-a-quarter visit from the commercial landlord, who is doing the rounds collecting dues.
It’s never a high point for retailers, and come January there always seems to be some well-known shopkeeper shedding branches quicker than a cheap Christmas tree. This week’s call promises to be just as brutal, so expect some fraught renegotiations with shopkeepers offering to cough up in January – or just hiding from the rent man in the stockroom.
To give this some context, if the insolvency firm Begbies Traynor gives your company a “red flag”, it means there’s a 33% chance you will cease trading within three years – with 10% expected to shut within the next year.
It reckons there were 32,722 general retailers that have one “red flag” against them in November, a rise of 8% from the same time last year. For food and drug retailers (which include things like convenience stores, pharmacies, grocery stores, supermarkets) the numbers with “red flags” have risen by 11% to 8,832. Julie Palmer, a Begbies partner, warns: “Without a strong end to 2016, I’m afraid many retailers may not survive much longer than the January sales.” Not such a merry Christmas, then.
