A year ago Robert Maxted, the veteran property entrepreneur, killed two buffalo during a shooting trip in Tanzania: one was felled charging from only 30 yards away while the other turned out to be the largest buffalo shot in the area for at least seven years and, with 49-inch long horns, was described by Mr Maxted’s guide as an “absolute monster”.

Now Mr Maxted, 59, and his partners at Parkwood Property Investments are on the hunt for blood again. Only this time they are after Gresham House, Britain’s oldest investment trust, in which Parkwood has amassed a 29.9 per cent stake.

Parkwood has called a shareholder meeting on January 21 to oust four of Gresham’s six board members, including the executive chairman. In their place, Mr Maxted proposes himself as property director, a partner from Parkwood as chief executive and another of their choosing as chairman.

Gresham sent out a circular this week to shareholders urging them to reject Parkwood’s resolutions, arguing that if Parkwood wants to take control of the company “then it should make a realistic offer for your shares under the City Code and not seek to obtain it by backdoor methods”.

At stake is a parcel of land near Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport that Gresham has in its books at £9 million but which could fetch up to £61 million under a preliminary sale agreement the trust has struck with a local firm.

Parkwood claims that Gresham’s management has repeatedly resisted attempts to discuss how to maximise its property portfolio. Gresham says that those discussions have for 12 months revolved only around Parkwood buying the property “at a value which your directors considered unacceptably low”.

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

He set up Pillar Properties in 1991, originally as a vulture fund to pick up institutional-quality assets as the property market crumbled. Pillar floated for £170 million in 1994, earning Mr Maxted another small fortune. He quit later that year.

His last appearance in the public company arena was as chief executive of Chesterfield Properties from 1997 to early 1999. In December 1998, Chesterfield said it wanted to liquidate its assets but it later emerged that deals to sell parcels of land had already been agreed: one, a sale to GE Capital, would have seen Mr Maxted departing to manage that portfolio. In the event, Chesterfield’s assets were sold to Quintain Estates, with Mr Maxted playing no part in the negotiations.

Mr Maxted wants the Gresham board to be his next big kill but first he has to persuade fellow investors that his pursuit will end up making money for all Gresham stakeholders and not just Parkwood.