Gresham House is an Investment Trust and one of the oldest companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
Gresham House used to feature regularly in our investment recommendations to private clients. It invested and developed out of town industrial and business parks and normally was at a massive discount to net asset value.
Several years ago the existing management team was shown the door and a new board appointed. It seemed to us then, that this was simply an opportunistic bid by a property company wishing to gain control of some undervalued property assets.
However, that is not the case. Gresham House been transformed and has made several new board appointments of such breadth of experience and quality that this investment trust must be taken much more seriously. In the summer Gresham House won the mandate to provide investment advice to Spark Ventures. That name may be familiar as Spark Ventures was one of the few survivors of the Dot.Com bubble and subsequent crash. This will earn Gresham House advisory fees, in addition Gresham House has invested substantially into Spark Ventures.
This new look Gresham House has become an investment trust on steroids and will be trading as a Strategic Private Equity Company; it is currently at a premium of 5% to net asset value.
Can we recommend Gresham House to our private clients again?
That is a difficult question as it does not fit into our normal selection of investment trusts with proven past performance over time and it most definitely is not suitable for widows and orphans.
If you are a client you will have to wait and see whether we think this is suitable for you.
