Jim Armitage: Pressure on G4S to halt share slump

G4S shareholders haven’t been happy for a long time. Constant disappointments on contract wins, repeated scandals and a mountain of debt at the sprawling giant have put the shares in the sort of chokehold that is occasionally deployed on guests at its young offenders’ facilities.

Now I hear chairman John Connolly may be facing a Tasering from his shareholders, hoping to shock him into some major action. Connolly joined in 2012 in the thick of the London Olympics security guards fiasco.

He promoted Ashley Almanza to take over from floppy-haired Nick Buckles as chief executive and investors were prepared to give the duo a chance to fix the company’s reputational and debt crisis. But they’re running out of patience as shares have fallen from 304p last year to just 189p today.

That plunge must feel familiar to Connolly. His other beat is chairing Amec Foster Wheeler, where shares also tanked last year. In that case, chief executive Samir Brikho paid the price, leaving in January.

Investors aren’t at the point of demanding he fire Almanza. Yet.

But the pressure is on to do something major to break the shares’ death spiral. That could be offloading a big part of the business, possibly its cash handling operation, or a total break-up. The small disposals announced so far aren’t enough, they say.

In his defence, Almanza has been working flat out to rein in the unruly beast of a business he inherited. Perhaps he should have made it clearer at the start what a mess the place was in.

That’s in the past, though. Investors want to see actions that will change the future. Fast.

The Duke of Westminster’s land agents at Grosvenor blame the Brexit referendum for flat demand for Belgravia mansions, but I’m not convinced.

Surely the world’s millionaires are more concerned by the massive hike on stamp duty for properties above the £1.5 million mark. That 2014 tax grab constitutes £1.2 million more to the cost of buying, say, Margaret Thatcher’s old place in the Duke’s Chester Square — for sale at £30 million.

So extreme has the new duty’s impact been in damping demand for premium properties that it’s surely raising less tax for the Exchequer than the old system. Research from Savills shows the Office for Budget Responsibility cut its forecasts for property stamp duty income in the financial year just ended by £3.7 billion since the new regime came in. Not all will be because of a fall in luxury property deals, but I’d wager much is.

Extra stamp duty on the super-rich is clever politics for a Downing Street accused of being too posh. But it’s not such good economics.