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Minutes of the first ExEC meeting of 2005
Held Sunday 6th February 2005 at The Griffin in Plumtree.

Present:
Julian Kern, Terry Emmony, Phil Jones, Ann Nurse, Gordon Moore

Apologies:
Steve Spence, Peter Sweeney, Mike Arkless, Cynthia Brooke, Andrew Smillie, Julie Grundy

No Response:
Dan Robson, Debbie McDonnell, Di Gluchowski

Good News

With 15 of our 24 shares in profit, our unit value stood at 100.3p, its highest level since May 2001. There is now over £22,000 in the fund.

Sales
With some of our holdings showing significant profits we decided to realise the money on 4 companies to reinvest.
We decided to sell British Vita, bought in Sept 04 and thanks to a takeover bid, we are up £304, 30% in just over 4 months.
Geest, also the subject of a takeover bid, that we bought in Feb 04 is showing a 43% profit and so we took that gain.
Tesco has surpassed our high selling price and at 34% profit we decided to cash in.
United Utilities Rights Issue shares that we bought in Sept 03 have always done well, and at 187% profit we decided to sell those shares while we hold onto the main United Utilities shares.
Lloyds TSB, Shell and Prudential were also considered for sale as they are above the High Selling Price but we decided to hold onto these companies.

Investments
Proceeds from those sales and the money available in the stockbrokers account meant that we had over £5,300 available to invest, which is, I think, more than we have ever decided to invest in one meeting before.
We had proposals from Peter (MFI) and Steve (Astra Zeneca) as well as reports on Reuters and WPP, which we had decided to watch in November. Also, suggestions of Punch Taverns, Morrisons supermarket, Volex, Thorntons, and TDG.
Eventually we decided to invest:

Future
The next meeting will be the AGM in Mid March, following last year's successful away night in Peterborough we will be having an evening at a hotel close to home and the meeting the following day. We have decided on the weekend of Friday 18th March, probably the Saturday night 19th with the meeting on 20th.
Please let Terry and me know your attendance for the evening and the meeting.

Difficulties in arranging the AGM weekend away with a flight somewhere have meant we will try to make that later in the year.

Audit
We need a new Auditor before the AGM to verify the annual accounts that Terry prepares so we are looking for volunteers.
I know from experience that it is not an onerous task, there have been no problems in previous years, but we do need to have the accounts audited by someone who is not on the committee. Please contact Terry and me if you would like to volunteer.

I hope to see you at the AGM next month

Phil