Have you ever wondered just what the money men really think of Huntingdon Life Sciences? Of course we all read snippets in the Ft and other financial outlets but what really goes through their mind when they hear the words HLS? SHAC set out to find out.

We made appointments at some of the biggest investment banks and fund managers in the world, Merril Lynch, UBS Warburg and JP Morgan, with their most senior analysts.

Armed with a hidden camera and dressed up in our Sunday best, with a story that we were a couple who owned horse-racing stables and had inherited £5 million pounds from a relative who worked in the biotech industry (!), we set off to our meetings.

Little did they know that Melanie and Arthur Simpson were in fact 2 people from SHAC! Would they tell us to invest our £5 million in Huntingdon? We asked for their opinion on the state of Huntingdon - here’s what they had to say.

MEETING ONE WITH MERRILL LYNCH
Here we met two of the Vice Presidents of Merril Lynch in the U.K. Jim Parker and his colleague:
Vice Pres 1 “ Huntingdon Life Sciences for instance are almost impossible to deal in.”
“ As high risk goes you are at the leading edge of high risk.”
SHAC “ If you had to go for Elan or Huntingdon which would you go for?” (Elan are An Irish biotech company teterring on the edge of bankcrupty)
Vice Pres 1 “ I would buy neither.”
Vice Pres 2 “ I would stay in cash, if it was my money I wouldn’t touch these two if my life depended on it.”
SHAC “ Huntingdon Life Sciences would be worth looking at because they are cheap?”
Vice Pres 1 “ But you see cheap doesn’t mean good, they are cheap usually for a reason that they are crap.”

MEETING WITH UBS WARBURG
Michael Bishop is a senior director at UBS Warburg
Michael Bishop “ I am a banker, if I was to give you financial advice I think I would say those two (Elan & HLS) are very very high risk.”
M.B. “ I think as a banker I could not recommend those two stocks to you..those two are very very high risk...off the scale high risk. They are out there as far as risk is concerned."

MEETING WITH JP MORGAN
Here we met three bankers, James Buhanan-Michaelson (Director JP Morgan private banking) and his colleagues Tom Brugelman and Rehmet Kassim-Lakha.
“So I mean Huntingdon Life Sciences are a company we felt are far too high risk. I spoke to the analyst about this yesterday.”

A resounding vote of no confidence for HLS then! Amazingly all three of these companies have held ahares in Huntingdon and/or been market makers in Huntingdon in the past. What we were staggered by was the sheer looks of astonishment on their faces when we mentioned investing in Huntingdon!