How Alliance Trust Targets Retail Investors | Business 2 Community

The investment company?s head of IR explains how he approaches private and institutional investors differently

Evan Bruce-Gardyne, head of investor relations at Alliance Trust, an investment company in London?s FTSE 250 index, has insights into winning retail investors.

Alliance Trust, which has been investing since 1888, is one of the biggest generalist investment companies by market capitalization ? ?2.2 bn ($3.5 bn) ? on the London Stock Exchange.

The company, which can use gearing and hedging to enhance returns and hedge risks, employs about 280 people in offices in Dundee, Edinburgh and London.

What is your strategy for targeting retail investors, and how do you sustain demand?

That?s very close to our heart, given that 70 percent of our shares are beneficially held by private individuals, either on the main register or through discretionary fund managers and in ISA accounts, and it?s a percentage we?d like to see grow.

Our core shareholders are private investors, and we focus on discretionary fund managers who can introduce us to those individuals.

From an investment trust perspective, you only really have your performance to sell yourself on, and if the return or reputation isn?t there, we?re fighting a losing battle.

We need to deliver performance and, once we have delivered, we need to explain that as coherently and consistently as possible to our target audience. I think consistency is very important; no investor likes surprises.

Through times like these, we find the fact we?ve delivered an increased dividend for the last 45 years and the fact we?ve put our dividend up 7 percent this year has gone down very well.

What are the different nuances you must convey to your separate audiences of private or institutional investors?

Given that private investors want consistency, we emphasize the established policy of paying a progressive dividend. We have long-standing shareholders, and some of our institutional investors fall into that bracket.

With an investment trust, there are different things that different classes of investors will look for. A private investor is much more interested in what?s happened to the share price, the dividend and a low total expense ratio, whereas the institutional investor is much more interested in the relative performance and the movement in the discount.

If you are an institutional fund manager, you are being measured on relative performance, so we need to perform if we?re part of that portfolio. This means there is a different story and a slightly different pitch.

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Is Samsung's white Galaxy Note coming to Canada on Telus tomorrow, Bell on April 10?

It's been nearly two months since Samsung's LTE Galaxy Note made its debut in the land of maple syrup Canada, and now Telus and Bell might finally begin stocking the white variant of the Gingerbread-loaded phablet. According to (supposed) internal memos leaked from both companies to Mobile Syrup, it appears as though Bell's planning to release the 5.3-inch device on April 10th, while Telus may let it loose as soon as tomorrow. Notably, the site also mentions that you'll be looking at an unchanged entry-fee of $200 with a three-year contract or $730 if you'd prefer the phone sans strings. It likely won't be long until this unicorn's northerly arrival gets confirmed for sure, but for now, drag your cursor over to the source links below for a shot of the Bell document and further insight.

Is Samsung's white Galaxy Note coming to Canada on Telus tomorrow, Bell on April 10? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Web privacy rules turn poachers into gamekeepers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - When you 'like' something on Facebook or read an online newspaper, perhaps a dozen or more companies are squirreling away data on your tastes, your habits, whether you're male or female, old or young, gay or straight.

They mean no harm. They just want to give you, the customer, exactly what you want - it's the grandfather of all business slogans. Their dilemma, now regulators' noses are twitching, is how to serve you, and serve themselves, when what you want is to be left alone.

There are thousands of analytics companies, audience targeters, ad brokers, ad exchanges and the like that can collect and sell data-based services on internet users for 5,000 euros a time to big brands, which then buy ad space where their potential customers might be lurking.

You only know these trackers are at work if you read the fine print. The New York Times has a disclaimer saying it hires WebTrends and Audience Science to interpret its readers' interests, and Britain's Guardian newspaper says it pays Criteo and Quantcast, among others, to do the same.

Sometimes a website can sell ad space to, for example, a luxury hotel, within three seconds of knowing a person with a penchant for spa breaks is on their site. The website running the ad earns money when people click on it. It is their lifeblood.

"There is no way websites will survive without targeting," said Kimon Zorbas from the Internet Advertising Bureau, an online ad lobby in Brussels.

Analysts estimate that targeting has almost tripled what brands pay websites to run their ads. In the United States, online ad revenue was just shy of $15 billion in the first half of 2011, 23 percent higher than the previous year. Figures for the European Union are harder to come by.

In Europe, outfits like Nugg.ad, which serve big brands such as L'Oreal and Eastman Kodak Co, place small parcels of code, or "cookies", on a site visitor's computer so they can see what kind of content a person clicks on. Then they write algorithms that make assumptions about what people might buy online.

L'Oreal thus increased its ability to reach their ideal buyer by 168 percent, according to figures from Nugg.ad.

Now regulators want to put the brakes on tracking.

CONSUMER CHOICE

The United States and the European Union both say they want people to choose whether ad firms can collect their data or not, but disagree over how much choice readers should have.

European regulators want companies to seek explicit consent for tracking, while the United States is happy to leave the initiative with the web user.

The EU agreed new rules on internet privacy in May last year, putting the onus on member states to ensure that companies store user data only if the user is provided with "clear and comprehensive information" about the purposes of and access to that data and has given their consent.

The ePrivacy Directive does not give any guidelines as to what constitutes user consent, but says that cookies, unless "strictly necessary for the delivery of a service requested by the user", cannot be placed without it.

Many countries are struggling to put the rules into effect. In Britain, the regulations allow for consent to be signified by future browser settings that have yet to be introduced, and companies have been given until May 28 this year to comply. In Germany, regulators are not that far along. They are trying to please the EU without turning the Internet into a jungle of pop-ups.

"We have a big problem matching regulatory demands with technical practicalities," said Ninja Marnau, a lawyer from the data protection commissioner's office in Schleswig-Holstein.

"This is operationally and technically a nightmare," said Phil Lee, a lawyer from Field Fisher Waterhouse.

Based in London, Lee is advising companies in the United States and EU on how to walk the tightrope of satisfying EU requirements without going much further than the U.S. standard.

Given the choice, nearly half of web users in the United States and Britain want some distance between their data and ad companies, surveys by analytics firms show.

And the job of developing a tool to give users cover from prying ad firms has fallen to the companies that benefit from the services of the ad firms. The poachers are now guarding the grouse.

Up to 50 blue-chip companies from Facebook to Walt Disney Co are holding weekly conference calls with a handful of data privacy experts on how users can turn off targeting and how companies can get the regulators off their backs.

Collectively, they are part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and European regulators have given them until June to deliver something called Do Not Track, a tool first developed by Mozilla's Firefox, one of the world's leading web browsers.

Aleecia McDonald from Mozilla, who co-chairs the W3C's tracking group, said she does not know if they will have the application nailed down by June.

The group is trying to invent a tool that covers all kinds of tracking "to end the arms race" between tracking developers and regulators.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

In the meantime, companies who depend on the Web for a significant portion of their business are left wondering how painful Do Not Track will be.

Nugg.ad said it was impossible to say how much revenue would be lost if some regulators get their way and people are forced to choose whether a website can track them or not, "but it could definitely hurt our business".

European regulators' insistence on explicit consent to tracking could mean that those who simply forget to switch it on are out of companies' targeting reach for good, McDonald said.

Until now retailers have enjoyed almost unfettered access to the 75 percent of European consumers that have Internet access, and they fear an effective shrinking of the market.

In 2012, online sales in Europe are forecast by the British-based Centre for Retail Research to grow by 16.1 percent to 233 billion euros.

McDonald said it was likely that the overall rate of using Do Not Track would be higher in the European Union than in the United States.

There are already products to shield consumers from trackers, some as standalone software or as add-ons to browsers, and Nugg.ad's Chief Executive Stephan Noller said the firm had already noticed a slightly higher likelihood among European users to switch some tracking off.

Ironically, there is one form of tracking, geolocation - perhaps the most invasive of all, since it knows where you live, work, eat and play - that could come through the tighter regulation relatively unscathed.

"Because where someone is located may affect how they are treated under law," said Mozilla's McDonald.

(Editing by Will Waterman)

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Immigrants should be legal

Editor,

First of all, I wonder if the writer of the Apr. 2 letter, "Immigrants also have a dream," is here in the United States legally or illegally? Because, he gives the impression he is here illegally. Otherwise, why ask for help? However, if he is here legally and is concerned with others that are here illegally, he should encourage them to leave and come back to the U.S. correctly. There are no easy ways, just the correct way.

Second we don't care what country they are from. In fact, that doesn't matter. In fact we welcome them, if they are here legally. There has been a lot of great people from other countries that have come to the U.S. and we have benefited as a nation from them. But, they need to come here through proper channels, like all "welcome immigrants."

The writer says he has a dream. But, if he is here illegally, are his dreams honorable? If he's not legally here, this gives me the impression his dreams are less than honorable.

Third, there is no easy way. Illegal immigrants must go back to their country and enter this country correctly. It can be done. They should get visas, not break laws and apply for citizenship. They should stop asking for the easy way.

Kay Ellis

Farr West

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?

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New comparison of ocean temperatures reveals rise over the last century

Monday, April 2, 2012

A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years.

The research led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego physical oceanographer Dean Roemmich shows a .33-degree Celsius (.59-degree Fahrenheit) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 meters (2,300 feet) depth. The increase was largest at the ocean surface, .59-degree Celsius (1.1-degree Fahrenheit), decreasing to .12-degree Celsius (.22-degree Fahrenheit) at 900 meters (2,950 feet) depth.

The report is the first global comparison of temperature between the historic voyage of HMS Challenger (1872-1876) and modern data obtained by ocean-probing robots now continuously reporting temperatures via the global Argo program. Scientists have previously determined that nearly 90 percent of the excess heat added to Earth's climate system since the 1960s has been stored in the oceans. The new study, published in the April 1 advance online edition of Nature Climate Change and coauthored by John Gould of the United Kingdom-based National Oceanography Centre and John Gilson of Scripps Oceanography, pushes the ocean warming trend back much earlier.

"The significance of the study is not only that we see a temperature difference that indicates warming on a global scale, but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years," said Roemmich, co-chairman of the International Argo Steering Team. "This implies that the time scale for the warming of the ocean is not just the last 50 years but at least the last 100 years."

Although the Challenger data set covers only some 300 temperature soundings (measurements from the sea surface down to the deep ocean) around the world, the information sets a baseline for temperature change in the world's oceans, which are now sampled continuously through Argo's unprecedented global coverage. Nearly 3,500 free-drifting profiling Argo floats each collect a temperature profile every 10 days.

Roemmich believes the new findings, a piece of a larger puzzle of understanding the earth's climate, help scientists to understand the longer record of sea-level rise, because the expansion of seawater due to warming is a significant contributor to rising sea level. Moreover, the 100-year timescale of ocean warming implies that the Earth's climate system as a whole has been gaining heat for at least that long.

###

University of California - San Diego: http://www.ucsd.edu

Thanks to University of California - San Diego for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Parties or Family Estates? | Pak Tea House

Raza Habib Raja

The views presented in this article are solely of the author and should not be contrued? as PTH?s official stance

Pakistan is right now witnessing the battle between judiciary and the executive. Although the apparently the tussle is between Prime Minister and the judiciary yet in reality it is the President Asif Ali Zardari who is the real character.

I am against the selective lynching of the President, and I do think that media is being extremely unfair on some accounts (though not all) but the fact is that whether rightly or wrongly his repute is impinging the party?s repute. As the party has historically identified itself with the Bhutto clan, therefore the current chairman?s repute is completely overshadowing the ideals on which PPP was originally formed.

This difficult situation is due to the legacy politics model on which the PPP has evolved. In this model the party membership is bound to just obey the current ?torch bearer? of the continuing dynasty. The evolution has taken in such a manner that party assumes that if only someone from Bhutto clan (no matter how unpopular or incompetent s/he is) can keep the party intact. The party needs a Bhutto and if one is not ?naturally? available then make Zardari a Bhutto!!

I have nothing against the illustrious Bhutto family members like Benazir and even Asif Ali Zardari as he has led Pakistan ably and has withered all opposition in a smart manner but the fact is that their sole credentials have been their relationship to the founder of the party, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

The PPP is forced to defend its chairman even it is difficult to defend. But the buck does not stop here; the criticism on the chairman is interpreted as criticism on PPP itself. While criticism on the current chairman is often rather fantastic the defense matches it ?brilliantly?. When the chairman is under attack, the supportive elements equate criticism on his persona as criticism on liberal democracy and his persona is actually defended with a genuine zeal. Since the chairman cannot be defended on factual grounds, the PPP supporters have to whip up various analogies equating attack on him as attack on democracy, left wing idealism, Sindh question, common man etc. And yes the President?s supporters won?t hesitate to even call you a Taliban supporter if you are critical of him no matter how liberal your credentials are

This legacy politics model in turn is an extension of personality template. Personality politics is often the characteristic of many developing countries. Here often the electorate starts equating a party with a charismatic individual who is generally also responsible for founding or popularizing the party. In some parties, after the initial phase, the individual though remaining powerful fades into background and allows the party to become more dominant. However, in some cases individual becomes more and more powerful and cult of personality forms. Cult of personality if successfully formed gives the individual unusual power over the party members. Once this develops, the party assumes the nature of ?fuehrer? party with the individual becoming the face, image and the rallying point. The identification of the party emanates from the individual and the personal traits start to dominate the image, direction and the public stance of the party. Generally speaking this personality cult often sets the basis for subsequent formulation of dynasty politics as well. In this scenario, the heir to the leader of the party does not owe his/her position to personal qualities but due to relation with the charismatic founder of the party.

The personality driven politics does have the advantage of ensuring coherence and centralized thrust towards achievement of objectives. In addition, it also ensures relatively diehard ?loyalty? of the voter as politics becomes more personalized if it is centred on an individual. THIS TEMPLATE IS PARTICULARLY EFFECTIVE IN THE FOUNDATION STAGE WHERE IT IS EASY FOR THE PEOPLE TO IDENTIFY WITH A CHARISMATIC INDIVIDUAL.

However, the disadvantages of this template in the long run far outweigh the advantages. On the flip side, the personality-driven politics renders the party and at times even its manifesto completely to the whim of the leader. Once such a position is attained then all the second tier leaders, cognizant of the fact that they owe their power and position due to nearness to the cultish leader of the party are forced to further propagate and strengthen ?loyalty?. Another negative element is that majority of the secondary leadership in order to retain the status quo do not show dissent and in the process further augment the position of the leader and inflate an already over inflated ego. Those who show dissent are generally kicked out or simply lose their stature and respect in the party. If the party was originally a progressive party, the emergence of such cult figures have a thoroughly regressive impact as the party become subservient to the leader?s whim. With little to no opposition to the leader due to weak and insecure second tier leadership, it is like a self destructive spiral which continues to take the direction of the party increasingly towards personal interests of the leader. Since the party identifies itself with its leader therefore its outward position develops in such a way that when the leader comes under criticism from outside elements, quickly the party as well as the voter construes that as criticism on the party itself and its original ideals.

Even more problematic is the situation where personality template transforms into dynasty politics. Here a totally incompetent heir can inherit a party with a developed leader obedient culture. If this happens the results are catastrophic as the incompetent heir has virtually ineffective opposition within the party, enjoys the support of the worker and even that of the intelligentsia.

This has actually happened with the PPP which now finds itself trapped in dynasty politics which emanated from Bhutto the founder of the party. Bhutto was a charismatic person who developed a cult like following. By no means is he the creator of this concept as this has been witnessed in many other parts of the world also but in Pakistan it initiated with him and gathered pace subsequently. Apart from the PPP, this also had significant impact on the course of development of other parties. The ?success? of Bhutto in this respect also paved the way for the other parties to follow suit whether deliberately or because this was what seemed to work. Today, MQM, PML (N) and PTI, all are modelled on same personality template.

After an initial phase of uplift this had a regressive impact as it gave Bhutto an unaccountable power over the party affairs and virtually insulated him from all the criticism. Progressive workers like J A Rahim were humiliatingly kicked out of the party and with no effective resistance. Moreover, it extended even after his death to such an extent that once Benazir was accepted as an heir to his legacy she was able to whip the party to her own desires. Unfortunately, the PPP in order to remain ?in? had to constantly whip Bhutto mania and this in the longer run has proven to be catastrophic.

Lets not forget that A PROGRESSIVE PARTY BY ITS VERY NATURE HAS TO BE GEARED AGAINST STATUS QUO AND SHOULD HAVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE ACCORDING TO THE CHANGING GROUND REALITIES. Conservative parties on the other hand have negative assumption about human nature and try to retain the restrictions and laws which have evolved to control freedom. Conservative parties try to retain status quo while progressive parties in principle challenge it. For conservative parties, legacy politics does not matter much on the ideological front as they are traditionalists. That does not mean that for them it is a good thing either. Dynasty politics can potentially curtail the ability of the progressive parties to evolve and continuously challenge the status quo. Because in case of legacy politics model the change comes from the cultish leadership who may or may not be receptive to such ideas. And even if one generation is, there is no guarantee that the subsequent generation would be. In essence legacy politics is like monarchy through with apparent semblance of ?democratic? popularity.

In addition the personal ?fame? of the leader completely determines the party?s image as well. While this is true for transitional leadership parties as well, but the extent is not that prominent. Moreover in that template the leader can easily be replaced whereas in the legacy template that cannot be. This problem actually negates the argument that dynasty politics is necessary for keeping the party coherent because in case the ?heir? comes with a controversial reputation, ideals of the party are likely to be completely overshadowed by the reputation of the leader. This is why the PPP is in a quagmire.

These are the factors which have to be kept in mind by the liberal intelligentsia before passionately supporting legacy politics particularly in progressive parties such as PPP. The counterargument given is generally on the pragmatic side that without the central legacy leader the party will break apart. The problem is actually that the template itself necessities this logic and once this template is broken the party will quickly readjusts.

One way to gradually dismantle the legacy politics is to ensure elections within the party on a regular basis. This may at least weaken the legacy leader?s power to make discreet appointments. After all let?s not forget that personality template and legacy politics is strengthened by handing over the key positions to the ?favorites?. This explains why all the mainstream parties are today reluctant to hold elections.

For a developing country like Pakistan which is right now reeling under forces of conservatism, the progressive parties have to play a meaningful and active role. Right now the dominance of personality template is seriously hampering their ability and in the process strengthening conservative forces as they are able to make a better case for themselves on the basis of competency and good governance. This personality template needs to weaken and eventually discarded for the progressive parties to play their due role effectively. The media, particularly the liberal segment, needs to exert efforts in this direction rather than spinning facts to absolve the central leaders of their follies. It has to be remembered that mistakes of liberals are the gains of conservatives. Defending leaders and equating them with lofty ideals is only proving counterproductive.

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