UK 12:00 Wednesday, 7 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Daniel Stewart & Company plc is the main subsidiary of AIM-cesspit listed Daniel Stewart Securities plc (DAN). I’ve been reviewing some, ahem, ‘interesting’ anomalies in the Companies House filings for the former. Shares have gone missing, or did they materialise out of thin air? And what about an issue of over £120million worth of stock to the parent, for cash? I kid you not! It is a dog’s breakfast, but one thing is clear: there will have to be resubmissions to Companies House and, I fancy, some corrective RNSs to clarify what exactly has been going on. With apologies for a technical article….
Already a member? Sign in
• All premium articles
• Tom Winnifrith’s Bearcast
• Access to all the entire nearly 13 year archive
• ShareProphets Daily Newsletter
Cancel any time
This area of the ShareProphets.com site is for independent financial commentary. These blogs are provided by independent authors via a common carrier platform and do not represent the opinions of ShareProphets.com. ShareProphets.com does not monitor, approve, endorse or exert editorial control over these articles and does not therefore accept responsibility for or make any warranties in connection with or recommend that you or any third party rely on such information. The information available at ShareProphets.com is for your general information and use and is not intended to address your particular requirements. In particular, the information does not constitute any form of advice or recommendation by ShareProphets.com and is not intended to be relied upon by users in making (or refraining from making) any investment decisions.
Comments
turbograndad
Hubble double, toil and trouble, the witches of Macbeth at work here.
DUCK AND DIVE
I love it when you talk dirty.
Paul Scott
Hi Nigel,
All good, and well done for digging. DAN is an obviously crap business, and its recent association with Rob Terry just confirms this – birds of a feather flock together.
However, I found the above article totally impenetrable, and switched off after a moment.
Any chance you or someone else could just post a brief summary of the key points?
Pls don’t take this comment negatively – you’re a great guy, and do wonderful research, but presenting a wall of detailed information, just means that hardly anyone reads or understands it. A summary of key points is needed. That’s a general point about this website actually – there’s far too much info, for an audience that is already overloaded with info. Let’s get it more punchy, and relevant maybe?
Cheers, Paul.
nigel somerville
Hi Paul,
Summary: the companies house filings by Daniel Stewart and Company plc (the main operating subsidiary of DAN) for share allotments, Annual Returns and Annual Accounts are a shambles of late filings and conflicting numbers. This is supposed to be a regulated business involved in (amongst other things) acting as Broker and it can’t seem to get its own numbers right. A less than charitable view might suggest that the Annual Returns filed by Daniel Stewart and Company plc contain numbers for the wrong company, and a share allotment filing appears to try to square the numbers but is itself riddled with errors, suggesting something of a rush job. If they can’t get those numbers right, what of the plc?
How much cash did the plc shovel into the subsidiary? £120m? In cash? Really? But that’s what that allotment filing states. And yet there was no increase in issued share capital in the same filing, compared to an Annual return dated a few weeks previously? And the Accounts tell another story altogether. Problem is that this is not the only inconsistent info. That £120m could have been £1m or £1.5m, depending on which version of events you read. How reliable does that leave formal numbers presented to DAN’s shareholders?
Is that any clearer?
The problem is that I’d rather present the evidence – and that, as you say, can make for impenetrable reading (one does one’s best though!). Without the evidence, it is hard to make any case at all.
DAN is not an isolated example. I guess if I wanted to try to hoodwink my investors (not that I am saying that is what DAN is actually up to) I’d rely on nobody being prepared to untangle a web of inconsistent numbers. And even if someone did, it would then be quite an ask to get a regulator to bother getting their head around it, much less actually bother doing something about it.
But at least anyone reading this through would see that they would have a good deal of homework to do before investing.