§ Mr. Gouldasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, further to the answer of 13 June, Official Report, column 499–500, what steps he has taken to satisfy himself that no City firm made allocations of British Telecom shares to individual employees in amounts greater than the limit of 800 shares applied to ordinary investors.
§ Mr. Butcher[pursuant to his reply, 19 June 1985, c. 143]: Allocations of shares under the United Kingdom public offer were made by six receiving banks according to an allotment policy announced by my hon. Friend on 3 December 1984. Under this policy all non-preferential applications were subject to the same maximum allotment of 800 shares regardless of who submitted them. I am satisfied that this allotment policy was fully implemented by the receiving banks. Only substantial institutions and funds were eligible for the placing arrangements described in my answer of 13 June and the brokers acting as 442W intermediaries were required to check this at the time of the offer. A subsequent check of the 2,127 applications submitted under those arrangements has shown that none was in the names of employees of City firms, though three applications for a total of 31,900 shares were erroneously submitted by three employees of an eligible fund based overseas, following a misunderstanding of the arrangements. I understand that the profits from the acquisition of those shares have now been surrendered to charity.