Constitution & Rules
The club’s operations have been driven by Proshare (PIC), with some local rules from time to time to address particular problems or situations.
Mobius was setup a Proshare (PIC) typical investment club. Its constitution & rules are based on those of the PIC framework. From time to time, additional local rules are put in place to address some situations: For example, at some point in the past, there were issues with meetings not being quorate (not enough members could attend a meeting at any one time); leading to meetings being postponed a few times. Some members were away or unavailable for quite a period: The club introduced the definition of active and passive members. The quorate calculation was revised and based on active members only. This has managed to tackle the problem of quorate meetings at the time.
The Proshare (PIC) manual was first issued in 1993 and revised in1997. This pack is comprehensive and has been influential in the success of the UK investment club movement during that period.
Over the early years, Proshare PIC had made amendments and relaxations to the constitution & rules, when wider experience has spread in the UK investment club community (as these surpassed 12,000 clubs during the 2000s). Some of the relaxation included lifting restrictions on the number of members in a club (previously 20) and also on the amount that could be invested by a member annually.
Legal structure
The legal structure of a Proshare PIC investment club is principally a legal partnership. This latter was often cited & defined in Proshare seminars as a light touch partnership (aka as "the simplified scheme") to encourage & simplify the creation and management of investment clubs.
This was made possible and agreed with HMRC under some specific rules defined in the PIC's manual. In the partnership format, the club is not liable for the taxes, rather each individual member is personally responsible for paying taxes on their share of the club's income and gains. HMRC recognised two types of PIC investment clubs: (1) the simplified scheme and (2) the Standard Form of Agreement.
This legal structure seems to better suit PIC clubs than having to incorporate themselves.