Here are the minutes of the meeting held on 24 July 2005 at Andrew's house in Corby Glen.

Present:
Terry Emmony, Phil Jones, Andrew Smillie, Ann Nurse

Apologies:
Julian Kern, Steve Spence, Peter Sweeney, Mike Arkless, Gordon Moore, Julie Grundy, Dan Robson
Di Gluchowski. No Response: Debbie McDonnell, Cynthia Brooke





On behalf of the ExEC and those who attended I would like to thank Andrew and Karen for their hospitality and the lovely barbecue, though sadly it wasn't as sunny as we'd hoped. (right, Andrew coping well with a light drizzle))

Latest News
With 9 of our 27 shares in profit, 3 of which are showing a 30% profit or more, and a further 6 shares with less than 10% negative our unit value stood at 97.9p, its highest level since February this year. There is now almost £23,000 in the fund, all members well in profit.

Sales
We considered selling some of the shares showing the largest profit, but felt that we only wanted to sell Friends Provident of those if we had a good suggestion for investing. In the event we didn't decide to sell any.

Investments
We had £1100 available to invest, but no suggestions from any of the absent members.
Today's Sunday Times had presented a table of the 50 "Hidden Gems", on the stockmarket, according to percentage growth in cashflow per share over a 6 year period, but where stockmarket analysts had given them a low value. This also might indicate companies that may be subject to takeover, indeed we own a company on this list that has become subject of a takeover in the last few days (BPB) as well some others (O2 and Tomkins) that we own as well as some more we have considered (Pilkingtons, Tullow Oil and the infamous Topps Tiles).
We discussed Pilkingtons, Tullow Oil, JKX Oil & Gas and Speedy Hire (which also had a decent review in Investors Chronicle) All seem good value with reasonable yields and P/E ratios, but all were close to the high for the year.
Eventually we decided to invest £550 each in JKX Oil & Gas and Speedy Hire, as we had no shares in either of those sectors at present.

Future
The next meeting will be in Mid September. We want to try another weekday evening meeting.

We didn't settle on a date, so please let me know your preferred date between 19th, 20th and 21st of Sept (Mon, Tues or Weds). We are open to suggestions on the venue too, but in the absence of any others I'd like to suggest The Harrington Arms in Sawley, or the Hobby Horse on the A46 north of Leicester,
Please let me know your preferences.

I hope to see you there

Phil