Lone Ranger helps Basil Brush boom
BUSINESS is boom, booming for Basil Brush and Postman Pat group Entertainment Rights, which has attracted a series of shrewd investors.
ER owns the rights to several children's entertainment characters and added to its portfolio in April with the £11m purchase of Filmation and its library of characters including He Man, She Ra and the Lone Ranger.
Anticipating that the Filmation deal should open up the lucrative US market, AAA-rated fund manager Roger Whiteoak of Framlington and his A-rated rival Carl Stick of Rathbone, have built secret stakes.
Whiteoak, head of smaller companies at Framlington was recently upgraded from AA to AAA by Citywire, last added to his stake in late May, when he bought 50,000 shares.
As a result, he holds 11.3m shares, or 2.74% of the £39m company, through his Framlington UK Smaller Companies fund and the Throgmorton investment trust.
Stick also holds shares through two funds. Between the Rathbone Smaller Companies and the Special Situation funds, he has 8.7m shares, or 2.1%. His latest deal was in late April when he bought about 2.5m shares.
Shares in ER closed the week at 9 1/2p.
