Ifs ProShare awards celebrate excellence in share plans

Asset Reunification website launched for shareholders

Computershare clients scoop ICSA Awards

Brown and Cameron speeches rated using IML handsets

The highly prestigious ifs ProShare Awards took place on 20th November, with 2008 marking the 16th year of the ceremony. The awards recognise best practice and innovation in design, communication and delivery by companies of employee share plans, and this year three Computershare clients were commended for their contributions to share plan innovation:

>    Logica plc in the ‘Most Innovative Use of Technology’ category for their revolutionary paperless share plan offering

>    Vodafone Group Plc in the ‘Best Overall Performance in Fostering Employee Share Ownership (over 10,000 employees)’ category

>    Serco Group plc in the 'Most Effective Communication of an Employee Share Plan (over 10,000 employees)' category.

In a push to educate shareholders about lost assets and how to claim them, Georgeson has launched a brand new asset reunification website. The site is designed to be clear, convenient and accessible to shareholders – who for various reasons are often unaware of shares held in their name – and will facilitate the process to reunite the public with their missing assets.

“Our new site has already received thousands of visitors, and is currently being used specifically to reunite shareholders with lost assets from Standard Life plc, Bradford & Bingley plc, Scottish Power Ltd and Aviva plc. We're confident that the user friendly format will help to increase shareholder responses.”
James Devon, Head of Business Development, Georgeson Asset Reunification

This year’s ICSA Awards were once more celebrated in style on 2nd October. With hundreds of key industry decision makers attending, the event was a lively gathering of Company Secretaries and industry names, with three of the major award categories won by Computershare clients:

    >    Most Effective Shareholder Communication: Cadbury plc

    >    Minimising Your Environmental Impact: Standard Life plc

    >    Company Secretarial Team of the Year: Cadbury plc

With two major awards under their belt, Cadbury plc had a particularly successful evening. The company secretarial team were congratulated on their hard work during the company’s complex demerger, managed by Computershare and finalised earlier this year.

‘We are honoured to have won this highly coveted award for the team’s efforts over the last twelve months.’
John Mills, Director of Group Secretariat, Cadbury plc

Computershare was also proud to sponsor of the most prestigious award of the evening, the Company Secretary of the Year Award, recognising the work of Co Secs from the complete spectrum of businesses. The winner this year was Matthew Phillips from Imperial Tobacco Group PLC, and Naz Sarkar, Director of Computershare Investor Services, presented the award.

The Cadbury team celebrate their double win

BBC televised focus groups watched the key note speeches of Gordon Brown and David Cameron during the party conferences this autumn, and recorded their responses using Computershare’s IML electronic voting handsets. The results were displayed on IML’s ‘Peoplemeter’.

The Peoplemeter is a gauge that registered the panel's positive and negative reactions to the speech as it went along.

The events were televised on the BBC News, and the panels’ reactions to Gordon Brown’s speech and David Cameron’s speech can be viewed on the BBC website.