Mr Metcalfe has decided to pare back the business to its gold exploration.Most peripheral assets have already been sold, and the company is weighing an offer for its tree company. It hopes to float its stake in a Russian electronic publishing venture on the Alternative Investment Market.So what is left? Principally, its 59.2 per cent stake in Connary Minerals. On balance, this is probably best left as a business school case study.ANOTHER smaller company situation, this time in the adventurous world of mineral exploration. Minmet was once the corporate fiefdom of controversial businessman Paul Bristol.

He resigned last September, when Jeremy Metcalfe took on the mantle of running the company. Or, for investors, it could be a case of throwing good money after bad Moreover, costs for the exercise are considerable The broker, Wise Speke, will pick up pounds 40,000. However, the move is the work of new management, so this could be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The dividend has been passed for at least the past six years; preference shareholders have not been paid a penny since 1965, and are owed a cumulative total of pounds 130,235.So an open offer and placing at 47p a share, against Friday’s price of 49p, to raise pounds 2.59m from the market surely merits an award for barefaced cheek.

Turnover of pounds 673,421 for the year to last September was easily outstripped by losses of pounds 702,317.Over the past five years, the company has not once made a profit. Disaster follows disaster as surely, it seems, as night follows day.Quite why it has a stock market listing is something of a mystery. At 79.5p, that leaves the shares on a prospective multiple of almost nine times earnings – which is hardly demanding. Buy for the income.THE FIVE-YEAR track record of Hay & Robertson, a leisure wear and rag trade business, reads like something out of Monty Python, or a how not to .. of business. Although its latest results show a mixed performance – frozen foods, for example, experienced tougher trading than in 1994 – matters are definitely improving. Pre-tax profits of pounds 21.9m, against last year’s pounds 19.7m, are still below 1992’s pounds 22.3m.

There were also significant benefits from favourable exchange rates.However, profits should edge ahead again in 1996. However, yields like this are tempting.Perkins Foods, on 7 per cent, is one where a cautious buy can be argued. That rate of return will probably slow, but there is still plenty of incentive to stick with current management. Buy.PROOF OF the woes besetting food stocks comes with some of the yields to be found in the sector: 10.1 per cent for Albert Fisher; 7.5 per cent at Booker and 7.2 per cent at troubled United Biscuits.Much of this reflects caution over the continuing price competition in the sector, and justifiably so. At 598p, they trade at around 14 times 1996 pre-tax earnings, which could reach pounds 33m.
Shareholders have enjoyed spectacular returns over the past four years, with the shares up fourfold in that time.