Hope springs eternal for ostrich farm investors

LET'S mix a few metaphors. Marriage, it has been said, represents the triumph of hope over experience. For investors in the Ostrich Farming Corporation, who found that, although the birds may be flightless, their capital quickly took wing, hope also springs eternal. Astonishingly, some original investors in the ostrich company shut down by the British Department of Trade and Industry in April last year, are willing to commit the cardinal sin of the inveterate gambler by chasing their losses. Around 2,700 investors, some of them Irish, put nearly £22 million sterling into the original company which, although promising annual returns of over 50 per cent, turned out to be a get-

poor-quick scheme.

Last month investors were invited to recoup some dissipated cash by signing up with a new "phoenix" company called Belautruche UK. A company spokesman said this week that the £1.5 million required had already been raised. Somehow the mixed metaphor of a fool and his money and one born every minute springs unbidden to mind.