Greene King (vouchers)

[monabri]

Just a note to say that I received my GNK vouchers today...one for the non-ISA'ed account and one for the ISA. - (my execution only broker is SVS)

I like the idea of the 50% off English Hotel Breaks (although I don't know if they represent good V.F.M ... needs more exploration).

[idpickering]

Notwithstanding your vouchers, we'll see how they're getting on tomorrow morning, as Greene Kings' Trading Announcement is released.

Ian.

[Gostevie]

Just a note to say that I received my GNK vouchers today...one for the non-ISA'ed account and one for the ISA. - (my execution only broker is SVS)

I like the idea of the 50% off English Hotel Breaks (although I don't know if they represent good V.F.M ... needs more exploration).

That's interesting. I hold GNK in my Hargreaves Lansdowne SIPP. I've no idea if HL pass on 'shareholder perks' but it would be nice if they do as there are several Greene King pubs in my neck of the woods.

[PinkDalek]

That's interesting. I hold GNK in my Hargreaves Lansdowne SIPP. I've no idea if HL pass on 'shareholder perks' but it would be nice if they do as there are several Greene King pubs in my neck of the woods.

https://www.hl.co.uk/shares/shareholder-perks includes Minimum 100 shares - Shareholder vouchers will be issued at the beginning of September to holders on the register. The vouchers offer discounts on food and drink at Greene King pubs, Loch Fyne Restaurants and Local Pubs.

I'm guessing that holdings via SIPPs will not benefit as they are not beneficially owned by you. Nothing to stop you buying 100 shares personally of course.

[OLTB]

As a holder of GNK within my HL SIPP, I can confirm that I do receive vouchers although they haven’t arrived yet!

Cheers, OLTB.

[maximan]

As I am also a holder but have never asked ii to get me vouchers I decided today to private message them.
Exactly 12 minutes after requesting them to claim them on my behalf they confirmed they had done so.
Result

[absolutezero]

The T&Cs on the vouchers have changed.
Still a good deal though.

They used to be: 2 vouchers a month - used once each - 20% off the total food and drink bill irrespective of value
Now: 1 voucher a month - used 5 times - 25% off total food and drink bill - but there is a maxiumum discount of £25 a time and a yearly limit of £1500.

[Arborbridge]

As I am also a holder but have never asked ii to get me vouchers I decided today to private message them.
Exactly 12 minutes after requesting them to claim them on my behalf they confirmed they had done so.
Result

I haven't had vouchers for years. Do you have certificated shares or are they owned through a nominee/broker?

When ever I've tried to get them, my broker has just said they do not get them: I suspect they do not want to be bothered with the aggro.

[Gengulphus]

The T&Cs on the vouchers have changed.
Still a good deal though.

They used to be: 2 vouchers a month - used once each - 20% off the total food and drink bill irrespective of value
Now: 1 voucher a month - used 5 times - 25% off total food and drink bill - but there is a maxiumum discount of £25 a time and a yearly limit of £1500.

Note there's no need to try to keep track of the yearly limit even if you are using them a lot - it's just a consequence of the others: 5 maximum discounts of £25 for each of 12 months = 5 * £25 * 12 = £1500 maximum total savings.

Worth noting that at the current share price, the 100 shares one needs to qualify for the vouchers cost £510 plus charges - so a really dedicated user of the vouchers could recoup their cost out of the savings in little over four months. Though it would have been under 4 months on Thursday - their AGM update yesterday (discussed here) has a bit to answer for there! ;-).

There are some other nice improvements to the vouchers as well - they now apply to drinks-only bills as well as to ones that involve meals, and there are no longer any date restrictions. Though the one that has often stopped me from getting all that much out of them remains, namely that they cannot be combined with other offers.

And when I say the "really dedicated user", I mean it - they'd need to be using them a lot more than I did even during a period some years back when I wasn't able to take advantage of their other offers on food, mainly because the best day for a pretty regular pub meeting with an old friend was Sundays and the really useful good offers on food were for Monday-Saturday only. Even then, I think I was only getting somewhere in the region of £100/year savings from the vouchers; recently, the convenient night for the pub meetings has changed to usually being Tuesdays, as a result of which I think I've had somewhere in the region of £10 of savings from the vouchers in the last year...

So all in all, a potentially very nice shareholder perk for a holder with quite a small shareholding and comparatively pretty large expenditure in Greene King pubs each year, if they don't happen to be able to make good use of better offers. I suspect though that that's a pretty small group of shareholders, and for the vast majority, it's at best a nice little bonus and not a serious part of their investment returns from the shareholding.

The small qualifying shareholding size and the fact that one gets the full benefit at that level does mean that the vouchers shouldn't really be regarded as a significant factor in a HYP investment decision once the HYP has reached a reasonable size. For example, suppose a HYPer was starting their HYP with a lump sum of £75k, to be divided equally between 15 holdings (as for HYP1), and can make very good use of the vouchers. They choose the 15 holdings according to normal HYP criteria, and Greene King isn't among them (note this is an example, not saying anything about whether Greene King should actually be in a 15-share HYP selected now). Should the extra £1500/year of value from the vouchers sway the choice in favour of dropping one of the 15 selected shares to put Greene King in the HYP? After all, it is very significant compared with the roughly 5% of £5k = £250 of dividends from each holding...

I'd say the answer is no, because it would be better to divert say £600 from the £75k to buy Greene King as a small side holding to get the vouchers, and use the remaining £74.4k to buy the full selected HYP, with £4960 rather than £5000 going into each holding.

There are a couple of new points about getting the vouchers. The first is that the covering letter for the vouchers say "The vouchers are only being distributed to shareholders that held at least 100 shares on 31 July 2018.", so I would not expect those buying a new holding of 100 shares now as a registered shareholding (i.e. as certificates or in a CREST account) to get this year's vouchers - they'll have to wait for next year's set (assuming Greene King continue with them).

The second is that the terms & conditions now have something explicit in them about the other possibility, i.e. holding in a nominee account, namely "9. Nominee holders are responsible for the distribution of the shareholder voucher booklet to their underlying shareholders. Greene King cannot send voucher booklets to underlying shareholders." I.e. clear guidance that if you hold in a nominee account, you should ask your broker, not the company. And if your broker refuses to help (which they might well be entitled to do, e.g. if the broker's terms & conditions say they don't pass on shareholder perks), then you're out of luck. On the flip side, the broker doesn't seem to be obliged to follow the company's policies, so they might not actually check whether the shares had been held on July 31st, for instance...

Gengulphus

[Arborbridge]

And if your broker refuses to help (which they might well be entitled to do, e.g. if the broker's terms & conditions say they don't pass on shareholder perks), then you're out of luck.

That was the position I was in with both Halifax and iDealing, I believe.

[kempiejon]

When prompted Halifax passed on the details so I got my vouchers.

[Arborbridge]

When prompted Halifax passed on the details so I got my vouchers.

Yes, I think that happened one year, and they then said I had been registered for the vouchers, but nothing happened in subsequent years. Then the total holding went to iDealing who were bluntly unhelpful!
Mind you, it isn't a great loss since we didn't get much value out of them when we had them years ago.

Arb.

[kempiejon]

Yes, I think that happened one year, and they then said I had been registered for the vouchers, but nothing happened in subsequent years. Then the total holding went to iDealing who were bluntly unhelpful!Mind you, it isn't a great loss since we didn't get much value out of them when we had them years ago.

Ah, I might have to chase them again then. I have one local Greene King pub and have on 3 occasions used the vouchers to reduce a meal and drinks bill for the 4 of us and pretty much each time I go the venue they find a new way to make me regret going, slow service, a fight, a disco, but it's central for a couple of friends so a sensible place to meet not withstanding the vouchers.

[gbjbaanb]

The T&Cs on the vouchers have changed.
Still a good deal though.

They used to be: 2 vouchers a month - used once each - 20% off the total food and drink bill irrespective of value
Now: 1 voucher a month - used 5 times - 25% off total food and drink bill - but there is a maxiumum discount of £25 a time and a yearly limit of £1500.

Marstons do the same, only they send you a credit card type bit of plastic that gets you 20% off almost everything. no other terms other than that IIRC, though you need a minimum of 500 shares. I never knew about it until one arrived in the post (from my holdings in an II ISA). http://privilegecard.marstons.co.uk/

I wonder if any other pub chains do the same.

[Gengulphus]

When prompted Halifax passed on the details so I got my vouchers.

Yes, I think that happened one year, and they then said I had been registered for the vouchers, but nothing happened in subsequent years. ...

At a guess, there was either some sort of misunderstanding between Halifax and Greene King, with Halifax thinking that your details had been handed to Greene King for getting the vouchers that year and subsequent years and Greene King in fact only having registered them for delivery of vouchers that year, or you were registered for getting the vouchers that year and subsequent years but Greene King asked Halifax for confirmation that you were still a shareholder the next year and failed to get a reply, or you were registered for getting the vouchers that year and subsequent years but Greene King decided to stop sending the vouchers out to underlying shareholders and so that registration ceased to have any effect (it would be a separate register from the one of registered (certificated and CREST) shareholdings in the company for legal reasons, with the vouchers being sent out both to the owners of registered shareholdings and those underlying owners registered by their nominee brokers).

Which makes it very difficult to see whether the problem was due to Halifax, Greene King or both - basically, that's one of the perils involved in having to use one's nominee broker as a middleman between oneself and the company...

In any event, "9. Nominee holders are responsible for the distribution of the shareholder voucher booklet to their underlying shareholders. Greene King cannot send voucher booklets to underlying shareholders." would seem pretty categorical: whatever the situation once might have been, Greene King will refuse to send vouchers directly to you as the underlying owner of the shares held as part of a registered holding held by your broker's nominee company. The only way you'll get the vouchers is by them sending them to your broker's nominee company (there's presumably some way for a nominee holder to tell Greene King how many books of vouchers they need) and the nominee company distributing them on to the underlying owners. And the more I think about it, the more I can see why a cost-conscious broker might flatly refuse to take on the burden of that distribution, or possibly charge a noticeable fee for the extra work...

Gengulphus

[DiamondEcho]

I've owned both GNK and MARS and never had access to these perks. Seems if you're entitled to them, and are aware of the fact, tht you have to claim them.

[I held them via an account with Interactive Brokers, rather than any form of more 'direct share ownership'.]

[maximan]

As I am also a holder but have never asked ii to get me vouchers I decided today to private message them.
Exactly 12 minutes after requesting them to claim them on my behalf they confirmed they had done so.
Result

I haven't had vouchers for years. Do you have certificated shares or are they owned through a nominee/broker?

When ever I've tried to get them, my broker has just said they do not get them: I suspect they do not want to be bothered with the aggro.

Sorry with the late reply Arb I have only just logged in.
My shares are with ii in their nominee account.

[MDW1954]

My vouchers arrived today. FWIW, the broker is Halifax.

MDW1954

[Gostevie]

I sent a secure message to HL regarding Greene King vouchers, and received the following reply:

Dear Mr xxxxxxxxxx

Thank you for your contacting us regarding shareholder benefits for Greene King.

Unfortunately, we have been notified by Greene King that Shareholders who hold their Shares through a pension scheme are not entitled to Shareholder benefits, and we are duty bound to comply with this ruling.

I have set out below, the "problem" that has been identified with SIPP shareholders receiving shareholder perks, but in doing so would point out that we do not necessarily agree with this.

a) We were notified by Greene King that clients who hold their shares through a pension scheme are not entitled to shareholder benefits, in accordance with section 173 of the Finance Act 2004.
b) We challenged this on the grounds that the benefit is valued as if the pension was the employer and the client was the employee, and unless the Shareholder Discount brought the benefit below the cost of providing it, then there would be no unauthorised payment.
c) Greene King advised the question was really for us to decide on and whether we wanted to include SIPP shareholders and report and pay any tax charge.
d) We have been undertaking an internal project to investigate this matter and the tax implications of it, and this has included seeking guidance / information from all Perk providers. This fact finding part of the project is now complete and we are now awaiting final guidance from our Technical Team in order to move this forward.

I can assure you that this issue is very much ongoing and we are still working on it. Whilst I can offer no indication of what the final outcome will be, I can say that the present position is by no means a final decision yet.

Regards

Oh well. Not the answer I was hoping for, but I commend HL for replying so promptly and explaining the situation so well.

[OLTB]

Referring to my earlier post - so that's why I haven't received them yet!

Cheers, OLTB.