The battle to control Gresham House, the 150 year-old investment trust, stepped up a gear today as the company’s board accused its largest shareholder of trying to gain control through the back door after failing to push through a bid for the whole business “on the cheap.”

Gresham House, whose main asset is a parcel of land near Liverpool’s John Lennon airport that could be worth £61 million, urged shareholders to reject proposals due to be voted on next week to sack the majority of directors.

The proposals are from Parkwood Property Investments, a private equity firm founded and run by Robert Maxted, a veteran property entrepreneur.

Parkwood has amassed a 29.9 per cent holding in Gresham and wants to replace four of the company’s six directors including Alfred Sterling, the company’s septuagenarian chairman and chief executive. Maxted, 59, and two other directors of his choosing, would run the company instead.

Writing to its shareholders today, Gresham accused Parkwood of a lengthy attempt to put a gloss on its move to gain control of by back door methods.

The letter added “your board’s message to Parkwood is that if it wished to control your company it should propose a realistic bid that reflects the true inherent value of your assets.”

Parkwood made two indicative offers for the company last autumn. Both were rejected by Gresham which claimed each failed to fully value its property assets. These were last valued at around £40 million.

Last week RREV, the corporate governance advisory body, backed the Parkwood proposals to remove the Gresham directors at an extraordinary meeting on January 21.

In September, Gresham said it had signed an agreement to sell interests in two sites on the edge of Liverpool, well in excess of their £9 million book value.

Mr Maxted made his first multi-million-pound fortune in 1987, selling Mount Row Properties, the City office developer he co-founded three years earlier, to Speyhawk. He joined the Speyhawk board, but left in October 1989. The company went into administration the following May as the property recession hit.

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