Fastjet is dead and buried as club looks to North

Investment Club

IN APRIL, the Investment Club underwent an extremely painful operation with the cauterization of the suppurating financial wound caused by our FastJet investment.

FastDebt would be a more appropriate appellation, as we were haemorrhaging funds at a life-threatening pace. Hopefully, though, the patient is on the mend now that our holding in FastJet has been sold. This is reflected in the club’s unit price climbing 5p to £2.93.

After our decades in the benign investment climate of government debt finding our investment feet in the harsh world of equities is proving very difficult. While the FastJet experience has been traumatic it has also been a learning experience for the club.

For instance, we decided on our investment choice of FastJet from other peoples’ reviews of the company’s prospects. What we should have done was look more closely into the company ourselves. We would have learnt contrary to what was being said about a new company and new idea of a panAfrican airline that it was neither.

With the departure of FastJet the club still has four of its original investments: Scottish & Southern Energy in the utility sector; First Group in travel & transport; Aviva in insurance and Afren in oil & gas. The club is making a good profit on SSE and First Group but losses on Aviva and Afren, giving a small but welcome surplus at the end of April. Where to from here?

Well, last month, the club was proposing restructuring its in-

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