Friday tips round-up: 3i, Great Portland Estates

3i seems to have a knack for investing. This is good, given that it is a private equity company. Indeed, the shares performed well throughout the bout of volatility which ensued this past Autumn and are trading well above their net asset value of 358p. The company has reigned in costs to well below the income it earns on management fees and is cutting the number of companies that it is invested in, allowing for greater focus on those that remain. In the first half of this year to the end of September the firm decreased the number of its investments from 81 to 72 and another seven or eight might yet be discarded before year-end. Worth noting, 3i´s chief, Simon Borrows, is not particulalry bullish on European equities. In any case, purchases for its portfolio of high-growth businesses was well-timed. Offering a 3.7% dividend yield and a degree of capital growth, the stock looks like a good investment, "but I would not be rushing to buy at this level, so hold for now," writes The Times´s Tempus.Sooner or later all good things come to an end; but in the case of the London property market, not just yet. As Toby Courtauld, the boss at Great Portland Estates, explains: the drivers of the London property market - GDP growth and employment - are still very much in place. The latter, for example, is expected to grow by 6.1% over the next five years. In parallel, the amount of property available in the central parts of London, as a proportion of the total, is down to 5.4%, the least since 2007. More significantly, the company has 2.2m square feet available for development, which essentially covers all its needs out to 2022. That means that it does not need to chase inflated land prices higher, quite the opposite, it may even engage in some selling. "I have backed the shares before and would back them again. Buy long term," Tempus says.