Mini-tender Offers: Protection for Shareholders

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stockwood (Lab)]

My noble friend raises an important point about financial education and financial literacy more generally. Again, I am happy to write to him. There are a number of initiatives across government. We believe that this is an important issue. Shareholders benefit from strong protections under the law and the regulations that already exist. They have rights to information, voting and participation in company decision-making. However, the Digitisation Taskforce recommendations that have just come out appropriately highlight where information asymmetry exists and where we need to get better at protecting some of our less sophisticated investors. It has some specific recommendations around less sophisticated investors. Again, we remain open as a Government. The FCA, the regulator, takes this seriously. We need to use this example as a way to tighten up and make sure that those protections and that education are both appropriate.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

Can the Minister tell us what the Treasury is doing to collect the stamp duty that should be chargeable on transactions where there is documentation executed in the United Kingdom, and whether looking at that might represent some method of providing a toolkit to defeat these bad practices?

[Lord Stockwood (Lab)]

The Digitisation Taskforce and the access to data have many benefits, not only on promotions but for the issuers of shares to understand where exactly the shareholders are on their cap tables. We hope that that increased awareness of where shareholders and those transactions are will be covered by the current taskforce’s recommendations.