Shareholders in GlaxoSmithKline have been receiving anonymous mailings regarding their shares in the company:
Police are investigating threatening letters posted to scores of small shareholders who have been told their names and addresses will be published on the internet if they do not sell their stakes in GlaxoSmithKline.
An anonymous animal rights group claims to be writing to every one of the pharmaceutical giant’s 170,000 small investors warning them to sell up as part of an increasingly violent campaign against the Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratory in Cambridgeshire.
I don’t have any shares in the company – I’m far too skint to be holding shares. If I did, though, I’d be outraged. Well, I’m outraged even though I’m not a shareholder, so no change there. Much as I like animals and enjoy their company, I despise the activities of the so called animal rights activists. These people do not like animals; they hate people and are prepared to indulge in violence to further their aims. They are terrorists and criminals, nothing more.
Each shareholder received a grammatically dire letter – frankly, they should be strung up by the apostrophe protection society:
“The only way to hold GlaxoSmithKline to it’s [sic] PROMISE is to target it’s [sic] financial vulnerability. We are therefore giving you this opportunity to sell your shares in GlaxoSmithKline,” the letter said. “If you have any doubts over the effectiveness of this action then keep a close eye on the GSK share price and watch it plummet.”
Shareholders were asked to sell their shares “within 14 days” and inform the group via Hotmail. “We will be checking that you have done this,” the letter concludes. “The choice is yours.”
This is not activism. The word is blackmail. If I was on the receiving end of one of these “letters” I would not sell my shares – indeed, I would contact my broker and buy some more. There is only one way to deal with blackmailers and it does not involve acquiescence. One thing I wouldn’t be doing is contacting these nasty, violent retards through their Hotmail account – that way they would have access to my email as well as the details obtained from the list of shareholders.
GSK said: “We are very concerned that individuals have been targeted in this way and condemn the group responsible. The police have been informed and they are taking the matter seriously.”
I should bloody well hope so. I would hope that stiff gaol sentences follow once the blackmailers have been caught.
A spokeswoman for GSK said it was not yet possible to know how many letters had been sent, but they had caused considerable concern. “Most of our small investors are pensioners and some of them have been extremely distressed. We have posted advice on our website, but many older people do not have access to the web. While some have been very upset, we have had others, some in their 80s, declaring that they will not be intimidated by these people.”
Quite right, too.