Minutes of the meeting held on Sunday 7th September
at Steve Spence's house in West Hallam.

Firstly our thanks for the lovely food and hospitality kindly provided by Steve and Janet, those of you who couldn't attend missed a treat and we voted to make mother-in-law's trifle compulsory at all future meetings.

Present:
Julian Kern, Terry Emmony, Phil Jones, Steve Spence, Ann Nurse, Peter Sweeney

Apologies:
Mike Arkless, Julie Grundy, Andrew Smillie, Paul Holden, Cynthia Brooke, Debbie McDonnell, Di Gluchowski

1. Sadly the meeting started with the announcement of Paul's resignation from the group as he needed the cash in order to get married.
We unanimously voted against Paul's resignation as well as his wedding !

2. Terry presented the latest valuation of the portfolio, which, at 78.4p as of Friday, is standing at its highest level since June 2002, with 7 shares in profit, and 4 in a slight loss.
In terms of dividends received in the 8 months of 2003, we have so far received £508, which compares favourably with £452 received during the whole of 2002.

3. We are in a position to take up our allocation of the rights issue from United Utilities. We all felt that it was something we wanted to participate in, and it means that for a payment of 330p per share we can buy 195 new shares, which are currently worth 557p per share. The 330p is due in 2 payments of 165p per share, one now and one in June 2005.
We therefore need to generate £321.75 to pay for this rights issue.

4. In order to pay Paul and pay for United Utilities we need to have £5,200.
We currently have £1,283 in the Schwab account, so we set about deciding which companies we could sell to generate the remaining amount.
We initially looked at profitable or break even holdings.
I put together a brief analysis of BP, Debenhams, Intercontinental Hotels, HSBC, Centrica and Tesco (click here) looking at their trends compared to the FTSE all share trend as well as what analysts were saying about them. This gave an indication, but proved inconclusive.

Peter then suggested we look at some other smaller holdings, which might not be profitable, but which might just not recover.

Debenhams we felt, in light of the current takeover position, might have more upside than down, so we decided to hang onto them.

Eventually we decided to sell BP, Intercontinental and MMT Computing (all in profit situation) along with Eidos, First Choice and Scottish Power (all in a loss situation, but we felt were not going to improve much).

2 of those companies - BP and MMT Computing - had originally been Peter's recommendations, so you could indeed say that we were robbing Peter to pay Paul !

5. Terry handed out the annual tax certificates to the members present, others will go in the post. Please inform Terry of any tax details (Inland Revenue Office, Employers reference, NI Number) which are not completed on your certificate as he needs to complete an overall form and submit on behalf of the club.

6. Next meeting will be 7.30 pm Wednesday 12th November at The Harrington Arms, Sawley, Long Eaton.

I hope to see you there,

Phil