That is certainly the experience of Tony Hewitt, chairman of the fully-listed Parkwood Holdings, which specialises in this field and has signed its third contract under the Government's private finance initiative.Parkwood, which made £1.3m pre-tax last year on turnover of £41m, has 10 per cent of a consortium led by Miller Construction and the Bank of Scotland. This has won a 27-year concession valued at £55m to construct a building for Mulberry School in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, and to manage its facilities.Parkwood's Glendale subsidiary will handle the manage-ment, which should boost Glendale's annual turnover by £600,000. There should be plenty more out-source contracts for companies with a track record. Analysts see pre-tax profits rising to £1.5m this year, held back by spending on expansion, before accelerating to £2m in 2003 This suggests earnings of 5.5p this year and 7.4p next. With the shares at 66p, that cuts the prospective p/e ratio for 2002 to a 12 and for 2003 to 8.9. Yielding 3.1 per cent, the shares are good value.Derek Pain is away.

At times like these the despairing investor clings to whatever fragments of wisdom come to hand. One quotation I saw this week sticks in mind, courtesy of the Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy only when others are fearful." Well, there's certainly an awful lot of fear about at the moment; it must be time to be greedy. Moneynet At times like these the despairing investor clings to whatever fragments of wisdom come to hand. The worst bear market in living memory, 1972-5, came at just such a moment when corporate profitability was splattered between the anvil of union power and the hammer of a quadrupled oil price.Stagflation – high unemployment with high inflation – spread across the world Britain looked ungovernable Confidence collapsed, and so did the markets. Yet in January 1975 the market recovered and the FT30 doubled in six weeks. Peter Hargreaves, the chief executive of investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, has an interesting argument, worth quoting:"In 1974, one feature of the downward spiral was life insurers selling equity holdings to maintain solvency The situation today feels remarkably similar.

Whereas in 1999 insurance companies invested £14.2bn in the stock market, and £10.8bn in 2000, the year 2001 had net withdrawals of £3.9bn."Recent falls have forced insurers to redeem even more equity investments to increase their cash and fixed interest holdings and maintain the required level of free assets over liabilities. These sales into a falling market are adding to the pressure, just as any buy-back during a rally could magnify a rise. Interestingly, if my memory serves me, I believe the catalyst which turned the 1975 rally into a rocket was life insurers and institutions buying back into the market."Up to a point, Mr Hargreaves. The authorities are certainly doing their best to relax the rules to prevent the downward spiral becoming even worse. And sooner or later fund managers will begin "bargain-hunting", as it is oddly known, and start buying shares again.The problem may be that, as has often been noted, in the medium term the reluctance of individuals to invest in equities may well constrain the institutions simply because the money to buy them isn't coming in. In the Seventies, let's remember, much investment was channelled through those occupational pension schemes companies have been so busy closing recently.