Aviva to start shares payout

Aviva will this week start paying out compensation to investors who lost out from the group’s botched preference share cancellation scheme earlier this year. 

The insurer expects to pay out some £14m in goodwill payments to “a couple of thousand” investors, a company spokesman said.

The scheme will remain open for six months.

Aviva announced in March its intention to cancel £450m in so-called “irredeemable” preference shares. But a fortnight later, after investor outcry, it scrapped the programme.

Anyone who sold their shares between 8 March and 22 March will be eligible for a payment, which is intended to return them to the ”same financial position they would have been in had they sold their preference shares following the 23 March announcement”, Aviva said.

In a letter to Treasury Select Committee chair Nicky Morgan, dated 28 March, FCA chief executive Andrew Bailey wrote that while the regulator was “not conducting a formal investigation”, it was “undertaking a review to establish whether there are circumstances that might require an investigation to be conducted.”