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May 31, 2008

Locked In or Locked Out

By Spear's

The lot of the minority shareholder in a private family investment company is not a happy one.

The lot of the minority shareholder in a private family investment company is not a happy one. Individuals worth many millions on paper often receive negligible dividends, their shares are unmarketable, have no collateral value, convey no privileges and are vulnerable to tax. This can be the position for decades and even generations.

There are billions of pounds worth of prime assets throughout the country held in (no, locked into) second and third generation private investment companies. For some shareholders, even paying the school fees, much less any high living comparable with their asset value, can prove a struggle.

Typical family companies seem to have sixteen shareholder cousins, two of whom run the company and have an office, secretary, salary, pension, health insurance, car (and sometimes even a driver), looking after the family’s £80 million of assets – while their less fortunate cousins eke out on a typical £30,000 per annum net dividends! There are solutions to this miserly misery, for which minority shareholders in this position are invited to contact Nicholas Pilbrow FCA, CTA, at nicholaspilbrow@robertfraser.co.uk. for an initial confidential consultation, which will be without charge, to establish if there is a possible solution for the case in question.

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