Manchester and London

This post is about money, not music. Friends tell me they pay to have their money managed. Some realise they need to choose funds but don’t trust themselves to pick them – there are so many.

I wonder they don’t take a dietician to a restaurant to choose for them. Now I’m going to let you into a secret. While my friends are tending their gardens, bee hives, dusting water dowsers, fishing (most time consuming), practicing on the piano, sailing and so on I take pleasure in reading about funds. The ones I reject don’t feature here. Unlike some restaurant reviewers (I’m thinking Tanya Gold in The Spectator) it seems pointless to tell you where not to invest – and potentially embarrassing if you already hold those dogs. But I will say that the rejects fail because they are on this list: start-up, too small to be sustainable (less than £50 million), over-charge, are closet trackers, management are spivs with no skin in the game, and no Wimbledon seats for shareholders.

So you only get to read what I have bought and my latest ticks a lot of boxes and some new boxes that I hadn’t dreamt of. First, this fund is so off the radar that I don’t know how it got its name. I do know that it is a relatively new investment trust, founded in 1972 by Brian Sheppard with £100,000. Secondly, it is now managed by his son, Mark; the family own a staggering 70% of the shares, so no surprise that it trades at a 14% discount to NAV. Actually, I am a late adopter as it was 20% and more. Thirdly, they underperformed around 2010/15 (remember Monks?) and have had a re-think. Thirdly, Mark’s chairman is eighty-three (an elderly relation?). Fourthly, the octogenarian chairman is the highest paid director, pulling in only £18,000. Fifthly, the company now is worth about £100 million. Finally, they raffle their debenture seats at Wimbledon for shareholders and exclude the 70% of shares held by the family.

This table, extracted from their Report and Accounts, reassures me that the directors don’t have their fingers in the jam. Any jam is for shareholders and I’m hoping it will be as good as Camilla Ritchie’s marmalade.

Now what do they invest in? Remember it’s their money as well as mine. They lost their way a bit and now are heavily committed to IT stocks. It’s an area I know nothing about. I never bought Nokia or ARM and lost money when a property company that rented student accommodation in Glasgow went dot com when I wasn’t paying attention. (It re-re-invented itself, shot into the FTSE 250, crashed out and I’m still a, somewhat bewildered, shareholder in what’s now a property developer.) My holding in GEC became Marconi and went from hero to zero.

It’s boring to drill down into where Manchester and London are putting my money. Suffice to say that it is 50% in the US and here are their top ten holdings.

Amazon 9.83%
Facebook 7.62%
Microsoft 7.59%
Alpha Bet 7.20%
Polar Capital Technology 4.14%
Apple 4.11%
GlaxoSmithKline 3.70%
Scottish Mortgage 3.60%
Yahoo! 3.58%
Heineken 3.26%

I nearly forgot. I have never been to Manchester, home to the 19th century Hallé Orchestra, where Manchester and London Investment Trust hold their AGM in November. So I will make the trip and, with a bit of luck, sit in their seats at Wimbledon next year. Now, stand by your beds, here comes the Hallé.