City Of London into the red, but NAV rises

27th Jun 2011 13:57

City of London Group, the financial services group centred on specialist financing and alternative fund management, saw its net asset value (NAV) per share jump by 13.4% last year.NAV per share at the end of March stood at 87.8p, up from 77.4p a year earlier.In the year to 31 March the company saw revenue advance to £0.79m from £0.18m the year before, but at the pre-tax level it fell into the red with a loss of £0.51m, compared to a profit the year before of £0.24m, as administrative expenses ballooned to £2.41m from £0.93m the previous year.The group added two management teams to create two new invetment platforms during the course of the year, which entailed spending £0.74m on payroll costs and swallowing £0.1m for the legal establishment fees. Additionally, the company awarded £295,000 to senior management via an incentive scheme related to NAV.The group's three investment platforms now are: Therium Capital Management (litigation funding); Trade Finance Partners (trade finance); and Credit Asset Management (asset backed finance and professions funding).The company bragged about Therium's success in selecting legal cases for funding, pointing to returns to date achieved on committed funds of 207%.The Trade Finance Partners business is exceeding expectations, while Credit Asset Management will be ready to start making advances to customers from July of this year.A final dividend of 1.0p has been proposed, taking the full year dividend up to 1.5p, treble the pay-out of the preceding year."We are very encouraged in the progress to date in our major investment platforms. Some of our resource stocks have traded down in recent weeks but we are confident in overall valuations against the fundamentals for each stock," said Eric Anstee, the group's chief executive."I am sure we can continue to grow our business in the coming year," Anstee added.At 2:06pm (27/6/11), shares in City of London were up 1.5p at 80.5p.--jh