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The team at WHITEFRIARS recently attended the Persimmon Homes Half-Year Results presentation led by CFO Andrew Duxbury. Persimmon Homes was founded in 1972 and is one of the UK’s largest housebuilders, with 3 distinct brands: Persimmon Homes, Westbury Partnerships and Charles Church. The meeting highlighted some of the headwinds faced by the housebuilders in the UK and the measures the Persimmon management team have initiated to weather the challenging market. UK Housebuildin

The team at WHITEFRIARS recently met with the Head of IR at Ecora Royalties, which specialises in royalty income from critical commodities integral to a sustainable future. Ecora was founded in 1967 and is headquartered in London. Today Ecora Royalties has its primary listings on the London and Toronto Stock Exchanges. Royalty Model Royalties are a form of financing in the mining industry, where the royalty company provides upfront financing and in return receives a percentag

The team at WHITEFRIARS recently met the senior management - CEO, Allan Lockhart (co-founder) and CFO, Will Hobman - of New River REIT (NNR), which was founded in 2009. The portfolio consists of 71 high-quality shopping centres and retail park assets across London and other UK major cities valued at over £800mn (as of 31st March 2026), with a focus on everyday essential shopping destinations. Tenants include Boots, next, TK Maxx, Sports Direct, Pure Gym, Asda, Primark and Sup

The WHITEFRIARS team met with the management of Gjensidige Forsikring (Mutual Insurance) on our recent Oslo trip, which traces its history back to 1816. Gjensidige is a leading Nordic non-life insurance business that operates in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. In addition, it offers pensions and savings plans in Norway. In a world where the mutual model is increasingly disappearing, Gjensidige proudly maintains this tradition despite listing on the Oslo stock exchange in 2010. Th

The WHITEFRIARS team, on our recent trip to Oslo, had the opportunity to meet with Equinor*, formerly Statoil, at their offices in Fornebu. Equinor is the state oil company of Norway and one of the largest oil and gas companies in Europe, with a market cap of over $80bn, dual listed in Oslo and New York. Equinor is one of the youngest companies in its peer group, having been founded in 1972[1]. Today, Equinor operate globally in over 20 countries, focusing on upstream oil and

Among the businesses we were able to meet in Oslo was Telenor ASA, a company we have had on and off engagement with for around 15 years. Telenor is the incumbent, integrated telecommunications firm in Norway, with segments in mobile and fixed, broadband, B2B and other digital services such as cloud, serving 114m subscribers. The company was originally founded in 1855 as the state-owned provider of telegraph services, these days it connects customers across four Nordic terri

The WHITEFRIARS team recently met the Baillie Gifford team that manages the Monks Investment Trust, founded on the eve of the Wall Street Crash in 1929 at Austin Friars in the City of London. Monks, the third in a series of investment trusts launched in the late 1920s by the bank J.C. im Thurn & Sons, respectively Friars, Abbots and Monks. Following the Wall Street Crash, the bank collapsed, and the management of Monks was bequeathed to Baillie Gifford in 1931. In 1965, under

A recent business trip to Oslo to meet four leading Norwegian companies provides a good opportunity to revisit what we like about corporate Norway and the Norwegian economy. There is a mistaken tendency to see the central Nordic countries as a homogenous block, owing to their cultural and historical links, the use of the same currency2 (save for Finland), and a harmonised flag that is subtly distinct for each country. Norway is an old country with a modern history, achievin

The team at WHITEFRIARS attended hVIVO’s capital market day last week at Canary Wharf, facilitated by Cavendish. hVIVO is a world leading clinical research organisation (CRO) based across the UK and Europe specialising in clinical and human challenge trials (HCT), laboratory work and drug development consultancy. The day started with presentations from the senior management team, CEO, Yamin ‘Mo’ Khan, CSO, Dr Andrew Catchpole, and heads of the various functions of hVIVO, foll

America doesn’t do history, or at least its curated mythology is built on the concept of a young republic founded on puritan principles that include hard work and the restlessness of forward only progress. 1776 of course did not create America, however, it was just a handful of years following the end of the Revolutionary Wars that the Buttonwood Agreement of 1792 created what was to become the New York Stock Exchange; it set down a marker of intent that an independent Americ

The team at WHITEFRIARS recently met the senior management of Dublin based real estate investment trust (REIT) I – RES in London - CEO, Eddie Byrne, CFO, Brian Fagan and the head of IR, Orla Keegan. I – RES is the only residential REIT in Ireland, listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, with a portfolio of over 3600 high quality properties[1] valued at €1.25bn as of December 31st 2025[2], all located in well-connected parts of Dublin, mainly consisting of apartment blocks and a s

In an obscure corner of the UK market, there remains a puzzling survivor: the FT30 Index. This is the oldest continuous equity Index in the UK, having been founded in July 1935 as the Financial News 30 Share Index (also known as the FT30 Ordinary Share Index). Superseded in age only by the Dow Jones Industrial Average (1896) and the Dow Jones Transportation Average (1884), the venerable and enduring nature of the FT30 is such that it wasn’t until the 1980s that European stock

The veteran Fund Manager, Terry Smith, co-owner of ‘Fundsmith’, has long divided opinion; his often terse and outspoken commentary is adored and disliked in equal measure. However, at a time when the ‘star fund manager’ is a waning phenomenon, Mr Smith is among the last of a breed. To that end, his decision, very publicly, to sell his entire holding in Unilever, is worthy of some attention. Smith represents an increasingly unfashionable investment style of active, long-term p

Investment ideas can emerge from a variety of sources, which makes investing so compelling. The fervent defence against a hostile bid by BBVA in 2024 for Banco de Sabadell was recently highlighted in an article by my colleague Neville White - Culturally Divisive: BBVA’s Experiment in Hubris*. It was over a pizza and a beer that Neville suggested a closer look at Banco de Sabadell via a visit to Spain to meet with management. We wrote to investor relations and a speedy respons

The new film, Romería directed by Carla Simón and currently wowing audiences and critics alike, is set in the pretty Galician town of Vigo on the Spanish north coast. It follows the travails of 18-year-old Marina from Catalonia, trying to connect with her extended Galician family, and exemplifies through language (Catalan, Galician, Spanish and French) the rich complexity of Spanish regional culture. We see this too in Iberian business and the corporate world. Back in Novemb

In the first part of this two-part prelude to the 2026 proxy voting season, we observed the areas where shareholder democracy is in peril from a combination of regulatory relaxation, aggressive activist investors, and more truculent managements. In this second part, we take a deeper dive into what to expect from this year’s voting season in the UK and US. The voting season, which takes place mostly in April-May (December year-end) and July (March year- end), often has a theme

As Easter disappears from the rear-view mirror, governance teams across the Western Hemisphere will be turning their attention to the 2026 proxy voting season. Each season in the UK, Europe and more than ever in the US, brings to the fore conflicts with shareholders and activist investors. In the UK, there has been early warning signs in a few areas where shareholders should be concerned that hard-won corporate governance principles, locked-in over time, are being rolled back

Conflict in the Middle East that temporarily placed constraints in operating through the Straits of Hormuz is a timely reminder that shipping is the lubricant of the global economy. Practically invisible when shipping lanes operate normally, just a short interruption can have a major destabilising impact on trade and economic activity. In considering the role shipping plays in navigating global trade, it is timely to be reminded that it is given to few individuals to change t

It is often a point of contention: What exactly does the CEO of a global, transnational company do? Since he, or she, has no discrete business segment to run, instead relying on a pyramidal system of business CEOs, middle managers and junior teams to run the show, the question is moot. Certainly, there is keeping the Board happy, ensuring strategy is executed (via significant international travel) and performance delivered on target to please shareholders and keep activists a

Since its United States drafted constitution came into force in 1952, Japan has had over 35 governing administrations, some lasting barely a year. This historically turbulent churn is strange given Japan’s widely viewed ‘de facto one-party state’; with only two exceptions, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan since its formation in 1955 1 . Moreover, just two Japanese administrations in over 70 years have achieved a working ‘supermajority’ in the House of Re