Wednesday 18 June 2014

Caledonia gives up on the Tories?

An interesting little snippet, today the investment trust Caledonia Investments issued its notice for the forthcoming AGM which includes the list of resolutions that will be put to the meeting. The thing I looked for straight away was if they were seeking authority to make political donations, as the company has been a regular Tory donor in the past, and quite noisy about it.

But there's nothing there - no such resolution. And this is, of course, the last AGM before the election where the company could seek such an authority. It looks to me like they may have, finally, backed off. For completeness, I checked whether the Cayzer Trust, the major shareholder in Caledonia, was still making donations, and indeed it is.

But the majority of Caledonia shareholders are not linked to the Cayzer family, and that's why I've always thought it was inappropriate for the company's money to be spent supporting a particular political party (though others - like Fidelity - obviously disagree).

So, hopefully, it looks like common sense has prevailed.

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