Legal & General (#LGEN) - H1 results, operating profit up 18%
- 2015-08-04 23:34:54
UK 07:55 Tuesday, 22 September 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Hello Share Trundlers. My main current reason for buying shares in insurance companies is that they are set fair to take advantage of the ever-improving financial situation, following the now long-gone credit crunch of 2007/8.
Legal and General (LGEN) shares are trading at 243.1p on a PE ratio of 16.1 and a yield of 3.82%. The company is well known as a provider of insurance and other financial services worldwide.
At 236p after the interim results to June; despite the government’s abolition of the compulsory annuity rule in exchange for tax relied on such contributions, the market still seems optimistic about dividends and earnings for Legal & General (LGEN).
Hello Share Munchers: Insurance outfits have taken a pounding over recent months. Mostly, it's because the government said people could take cash sums out of their pensions when the time comes to retire. They expect people who've been saving all their working lives to take the opportunity to blow the lot on a new car, boat and so on. That's the way I read it, anyway.
Hello Share Tinklers: Shares in insurance companies are pretty volatile. You never know where you are with them. I hold stocks in two high profile companies the old Royal Insurance Company now RSA (RSA) and Legal and General (LGEN.).
Hello Share Fans: You have probably been watching all these horrible pictures of homes under water in the south and west of England.
Hello Share Folk. Because we find penny share action quite exciting – they can go up a lot and fall (just as dramatically) in one day – we tend to forget that big money can also be made with Footsie giants.
The Legal & General (LGEN) share price is at the top of its game and the top of its trend pathway. It has risen 55% over a year in which the FTSE100 rose by only 16%. That gives scope for the share price to fall back again on profit taking.
The great issue surrounding insurance has been, as with the banks, one of capital adequacy: do they have enough capital to sustain and carry out their contractual obligations? That has been an overriding preoccupation for European insurance industry regulators. But regulation and the things that are regulated are as a moving feast or moving goal posts on unlevel playing fields. Most recently, the regulators have been worrying about those insurance companies that have been giving guarantees to customers. One recalls what that kind of thing did to an even once older insurance company, the late and august Equitable Life, which was ordered by the High Court to pay up on promises made contractually. It has been made known that a small number of insurers are under the regulatory eye in that respect.
