David Stone the would-be carpetbagger who is campaigning for Standard Life to demutualise has issued a threat to financial advisers.
Mr Stone said that advisers had a duty to advise their clients to back his campaign because of the potential windfall payments. Mr Stone is said to have obtained 1,830 votes from policyholders to demutualise. As we previously reported, the minimum to invoke an Extraordinary General Meeting to vote on the issue is only 1,000.
Apparently, if advisers do not recommend a 'yes' vote for demutualisation, he will report them to the industry regulator, the Financial Services Authority.
Our View
We believe that many advisers in the industry share our view. Basically, Mr Stone wants us to advise our clients to vote for the demutualisation. The outcome being that each with profits policyholder should be entitled to a windfall payment.
Mr Stone believes this is in policyholders best interests because, if the demutualisation did not go ahead, there would be no windfalls. We believe that policyholders have to do what is right for them and not base their entire financial future on a windfall that might be small or never materialise.
At the moment, Standard Life is run for the benefit of its policyholders, not shareholders. We think Mr Stone's view does not consider the future for policyholders to live in a shareholder World.
With regard to reporting advisers to the regulator, then do so Mr Stone. We generally support your right to motion for de-mutualisation - but allegedly threatening to report advisers to the regulator is not the way to get advisers on side.
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