CENTS & NONSENSE:IF GILLIAN McKeith of Channel 4s' You Are What You Eat programme were an investment guru rather than a nutritionist, what would she say about our TDs' investment appetites?
The Dáil Register of Members' Interests is a bit like the big table McKeith piles high with food regularly eaten by her participants: chips, burgers, fish and chips, pizza and fried Mars bars. It lays out what our TDs have been stuffing their investment portfolios with this year.
McKeith: Okay, let's see what your politicians' portfolios have been eating. We studied the members' interests list and it threw up some very interesting results.
Richard Bruton's holdings look a bit anaemic. The share price of some of the financials he favours - AIB, Bank of Ireland, Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life & Permanent - are down sharply. The other stocks that should be fortifying the portfolio - building products companies CRH and Kingspan - are exposed to the property slowdown. I'm afraid that if his shares in food company IAWS don't fatten him up, he and his father will be forced to graze beef cattle on their 175 acres of farmland in Dunboyne or grow fruit trees in their 50 acres of woodlands in Drumree, Co Meath.
Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea's very risky and unproven diet of high minerals, no greens, makes his portfolio a ticking time bomb. The nutritional value of his mining shares - Ormond Mining, African Diamonds, Petronet (down 35 per cent this year), West African Diamonds, Petrel Ltd, Persian Gold, Formation Group, and Pan Andean Ltd - is questionable. Failure to eat even a little bit of the green agenda, by binning some mining shares, might be very dangerous to his portfolio's health.
He has one week to renounce his Wild West investment methodology. If I don't see any changes to his asset mix, I'll be forced to send him off to my balanced portfolio boot camp.
Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan is finishing his first week in the programme. He's on a restricted diet that does not allowed the conspicuous consumption of oil or gold. The Roscommon-South Leitrim representative was so addicted to his 13 different mining shares that I thought it best for him to go cold turkey.
However, I was glad to see that, unlike Mr O'Dea, he likes other types of assets and shares, too. In addition to land both here and abroad, his diet includes: CNG Travel, Ryanair, Future Internet Technologies, Industrial Enterprises, United Drug, Arena Leisure, Standard Life, Ashtead Group, Blackrock International Land, Third Force, Boundary Capital, Bank of Ireland, AIB, Ladbrokes and Anglo Irish Bank.
Even TDs on a mainly vegetable diet have to be careful about vitamin deficiencies in their portfolio. Ciarán Cuffe of the Green Party is slimming down too quickly. His ethical investment in the Friends First stewardship fund is down 14.12 per cent in the year to date. Losing that percentage of your investment in a year is never a good idea. He'll need to be vigilant about his asset weightings and consider a more robust supplement formula.
Women tend to be more cautious investors and Deirdre Clune is no exception. Her portfolio diet is limited to properties in Ballsbridge and shares in two investment holding companies. Given her youth, she probably needs to bulk it up with riskier investments such as emerging markets and commodities. She needs to feel the burn: the higher the risk, the higher the potential reward.
Two TDs are good at putting their money where their mouth is. Minister of State for Health Jimmy Devins and Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr James Reilly, both have shares in nursing homes. Devins also holds unit shares with Canada Life and an educational investment fund.
Reilly has extensive commercial and residential property holdings in north Co Dublin, an acre in Co Meath, a holiday home in Doonbeg and 150 acres of land in Co Offaly. Their diets are healthy but they need to be more varied in their food choices. Unless they want to end up in those nursing homes at an early age, they'll need to improve their portfolio's health by including tasty morsels in international stocks.
Alan Shatter has one of the longest lists but it's a bit property heavy. He jointly owns a string of properties in Dublin 1, 2, 6, 7 and 12; two in London; and he and his investment buddies have a fondness for the upmarket resort of Naples in Florida. He has a good selection of funds and Irish shares, too.
All in all, your TDs have a healthy approach to investment and acquisition. Unfortunately, they are a bit too dependent on Irish shares and the property market, so this year they'll be forced to tighten their belts and work up more of a sweat at the office.
Margaret E. Ward is a journalist and director of Clear Ink, the clear English specialists
