The Share Centre was established in April 1991 by Gavin Oldham to provide self-select share services for a broad range of personal investors. In 1993, The Share Centre was appointed a ‘share shop’ for the British Telecom BT3 share offer. This, coupled with other share offerings including National Power / Powergen in 1995, contributed large numbers of Share Accounts.
In 1999, The Share Centre acquired Bradford & Bingley’s corporate PEP business, considerably extending the Group’s corporate share service relationships. The acquisition resulted in the transfer of approximately 90,000 PEPs to The Share Centre in April 1999.
On 8 February 2000, Share plc made an offer of free shares to customers of The Share Centre who had either stock or cash in their Share Accounts, or who had opened fully subscribed Maxi ISAs, as at 8 January 2000 (the “Year 2000 Offer”). As a consequence of this offer over 90,000 customers of The Share Centre became shareholders in Share plc.
In conjunction with the Year 2000 Offer, The Share Centre developed and implemented its own share trading platform, Sharemark. Initially designed to facilitate the trading of Share plc’s shares, Sharemark evolved into a trading platform to other unquoted companies as well as to existing quoted companies seeking a secondary trading platform for liquidity purposes.
On 19 February 2001, Share plc made a further offer of free shares (the “Year 2001 Offer”). The Year 2001 Offer was designed to incentivise new and existing customers to subscribe for certain of The Share Centre’s eligible accounts, including ISAs, and to join in Share plc's future as shareholders.
During 2001 and 2002, The Share Centre extended its range of corporate share services through the provision of SIP administration services to third parties, following the launch of a SIP for its own employees in December 2000. Such services were initially established for Express Dairies plc (now Arla Foods plc), Christian Salvesen plc and Hyder Consulting plc.
In August 2002, The Share Centre acquired the business of StockAcademy Limited, a Cambridge-based retail stockbroker and some 18,983 investors’ share dealing accounts were transferred to The Share Centre. These accounts included several white label accounts. These relationships continue to be actively promoted.
The Share Centre also took over StockAcademy’s commercial relationship with Georgeson Shareholder, which involved the white label administration and dealing arrangements for high volume, low cost share dealing services to corporate companies, as well as missing shareholder programmes. Between 2002 and 2004, The Share Centre executed some 200,000 transactions in such services administered for Barclays plc, Aviva plc, Centrica plc and Rank Group plc. In December 2003, Georgeson Shareholder was acquired by a share registration business.
In 2003, The Share Centre launched an EIS administration service for third party fund managers in HM Revenue and Customs (“HMRC”) approved and unapproved EIS portfolios and The Share Centre launched its Shares4Schools initiative, a national competition aiming to encourage students to learn about the world of business. The Group benefits from positive public relations exposure from the Shares4Schools initiative.
In March 2004, following a competitive tender, The Share Centre was confirmed as the preferred supplier in the establishment and operation of a regional trading platform for West Midlands-based businesses. The regional trading platform, subsequently named Investbx, launched during 2007. The Share Centre provides the market trading and valuation mechanism via Sharemark, together with fully integrated white label share dealing and administration services.
In January 2005, The Share Centre became an HMRC-approved plan manager for CTFs.
In 2005, The Share Centre undertook a comprehensive re-branding exercise and refurbishment of its website, www.share.com, prior to committing to a significant annual promotional budget of approximately £2 million per annum. It also adopted a benchmarked revenue share Key Performance Indicator for 2006 onwards
In 2006, The Share Centre acquired 3,040 corporate PEPs from a share registration business and in November 2007 acquired over 1,050 corporate PEPs and over 280 corporate ISAs from Prudential Personal Equity Plans Limited.
During 2007 the Group also completed the reorganisation of its investment management subsidiary, Sharefunds. Sharefunds now oversees the provision of an administration service for fund managers wishing to manage their own OEICs, without them performing the related administration work.
In January 2008, the Company launched the 2008 Free Shares Offer to both potential and existing customers. The maximum number of Free Shares available under the 2008 Free Shares Offer was 4,000,000. The 2008 Free Shares Offer which closed at 6.00 p.m. on 3 April 2009, was principally designed to encourage customers and potential customers to invest in eligible account services. The Directors believed that the ability for both existing and new customers and shareholders to take part in the 2008 Free Shares Offer offered opportunity for adding to the growth of the Group and that by linking high quality and high volume customer business with participation in Share plc, growth could be accelerated.
The admission of the ordinary shares of Share plc to trading on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange and PLUS Market took place in May 2008.
2009 saw an expansion of our Sharefunds fund administration business. This was facilitated by an agreement in October 2009 with WAY Fund Managers Limited under which we supply fund accounting services for the collective funds they manage and administer. In accordance with the agreement, Share plc also made a minority investment in their holding company WAY Group Limited. This will enable us to grow our administration activities to compete in a field where investment management is increasingly being decoupled from administration functions.
Most recently in summer 2011 Sharemark launched its own Primary Fund Raising service designed to faciliate equity fund raising of up to € 5 million for SMEs by accessing investment from the retail community
