Rebel investor tackles Property Internet

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    By By Tony Glover

    Date: Monday 15 Oct 2001

    LONDON (ShareCast) - Champion of small shareholders Paul Scott has once taken up cudgels to defend their interests - this time in the case of a dot.com with more cash than prospects.

    Property Internet is sitting on £2m after recently putting up its shutters but it has told Scott that it could take up to 12 months to finish winding up the company and pay off shareholders.

    Scott recently launched another campaign to pressure cash-burning virtual conference organiser Expocentric to wind up its business and use its £35m cash pile to pay its long-suffering retail investors.

    Paul Scott, aged 33, is typical of a new breed of small shareholders determined to challenge the traditional disdainful attitude of companies towards their retail shareholders.

    Employed by day as a finance director, he believes that the attitude of companies towards their small shareholders is too frequently condescending and outdated in a share-owning democracy.

    "Retail investors often between them own 40% to 45% of a company's stock," Scott said. "An institutional fund manager with this kind of shareholding would be given the red-carpet treatment by the company concerned, whereas individual small shareholders might not be allowed through the door."

    The first two "stop" campaigns were only a warm-up for what Scott hopes will become a rallying call for small shareholders who feel that they are not being taken seriously enough by the companies in which they hold stock.

    "The 'stop' campaigns are not just about winding up failed dot.coms," Scott said. "I believe that wider issues of corporate governance are involved. 'Stop' can also be a plea for the company concerned to stop and reconsider its strategy. Imagine if, for instance, the Marconi shareholders had been able to question that company's shift towards telecoms."

    Scott's first two websites, the "StopEXC", the focus for Expocentric rebels, and "StopPYI", the focus for Property Internet shareholders, pull few punches.

    "My view is that the business has failed and that the cash should be returned to shareholders forthwith," Scott says on StopPYI. "With only £2m in cash it is very easy to say how the cash pile could gradually wither away, destroying what is left of shareholder value … It seems obvious to me that the management of this cash shell are now going to be drawing salaries for doing very little, at shareholders' expense."

    Scott is currently in the process of identifying other companies that he feels are being dismissive of their small shareholders.

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