CIN.L Regulatory News (CIN)

City of London Group plc

("COLG" or the "Company")

Preliminary results

The Company is pleased to announce its audited preliminary results for the year ended 31 March 2011.

Highlights:

·; Net Asset Value increased by 13.4% to 87.8p (2010-77.4p);

·; Establishment of two new major investment platforms;

·; Mining and Resource stocks have performed exceptionally well;

·; Record profits on disposals as we move funds to the investment platforms;

·; Growth in interest income on loan advances to £210,391 (2010 £21,481);

·; Strong pipeline of litigation cases for funding.

27 June 2011

Enquiries:

Chairman's Statement

Following the Company's successful Firm Placing and Open Offer to raise approximately £6 million (gross), we are pleased to present our results for the year ended 31 March 2011. This has been a further year of investment and identifying new investment opportunities to lay the foundations for the future. This is reflected in the scale of costs incurred including those for salaries and professional fees for the start-up of our investment platforms.

Last year we established and invested in fund management companies directed at providing finance to the legal sector. This year we have focussed on establishing two more platforms aimed at providing finance for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME's). Each one of these businesses, described further in this report, is capable of growing into a very significant company in its own right.

We are confident now that we have a sufficiently wide set of specialist fund managers to attract significant third party funds.

Investment Climate

Our cautious outlook that was expressed last year for stock markets generally has proved to be correct. Ongoing weakness in liquidity and financial confidence in the developed economies has continued, such that recovery and growth for most global economies remains very fragile and uncertain.

Concerns over counterparty risk continue to dominate the financial markets and this, combined with major geographical disasters such as the Japanese earthquake and resultant tsunami earlier this year, has made investment fundraising difficult. With that backdrop I was therefore delighted that our Company was able to raise £6m of equity funds in April this year to expand and allow us to take advantage of the significant opportunities that exist to provide essential funding to the SME market. We welcome to our shareholder base some major 'household name' institutions.

Investment Performance

The group's holdings in resource stocks have continued to underpin our financial performance. Continued worldwide demand for key commodities has again driven the rise in our portfolio of investments. Profits on sales of investments have exceeded last year's by 19% as we continue to fund our strategy of diversification away from stock markets towards alternative investment platforms where we can benefit not only from the deployment of our own funds but also from fees achieved by obtaining superior performance for third party investors.

We have seen strong growth in interest income from loans advanced to £210,391 (2010- £21,481) and have invested these funds in developing new investment platforms for the future.

Our investment into legal cases, via our subsidiary company Therium, has continued using funds released from sales of our investment portfolio. The outcome of these litigation cases can be unpredictable particularly in relation to the time involved from initial funding to settlement or court judgement. A number of larger cases are now well advanced and we look forward in the coming year to more successes. During our fund raising we reported that, on the four cases completed to date, we have seen returns of 207% on committed funds.

Strategy and Outlook

Our strategy is to release equity invested in the stock market as necessary to fund our investment platforms. Since 31 March 2011, we have seen some weakness in the price of some of our key portfolio stocks but we continue to look at fundamentals to determine the appropriate time to pursue this strategy.

Our modified investment policy of capping each area of investment up to a maximum of 20% of gross assets will over time also be applied to our investment portfolios.

We remain encouraged by developments within our management platforms and they are trading in line with the company's expectations. Prospects for deploying our capital into these core platforms are good and we see substantial growth potential in our new platforms, as bank lending to SME's remains heavily restricted. Together, the new management platforms provide a good combination of solid foundations to deliver long-term value for shareholders.

Henry Lafferty

27 June 2011

Chief Executive's Review:

City of London Group has had an eventful year. We have added two major management teams to create two new significant investment platforms. At the same time we have grown our Net Asset Value by 13.4% to 87.8p, (2010: 77.4p). This has involved us spending £738,000 of payroll costs for the three investment platforms and absorbing the legal establishment fees for them of over £100,000. Similarly, the senior management incentive award of some £295,000 for achieving this growth in value has been deducted.

We now have strong expectations that our three major investment platforms will show good progress in the coming year.

Since 31 March 2011, we have succeeded in raising a gross £6 million of new equity to ensure we can pursue the opportunities in funding SME's that continue to present themselves to us.

Investment Report

Our mining investments have continued to be the bedrock of our growth in value this year. As I mentioned last year, our strong knowledge and experience of the resources sector are at the core of our investment philiosophy and we continue to see value in the fundamentals in each of our core holdings shown below. During the year it has been our policy to 'top slice' gains in our investment stock portfolio in order to finance the new investment platforms.

PRINCIPAL HOLDINGS (as at 31 March 2011)

Investment Platforms

Our core investment platforms are now :-

·; Therium Capital Management Limited (Therium) - litigation funding

·; Trade Finance Partners Limited (TFPL) - trade finance

·; Credit Asset Management Limited (CAML) - asset backed finance and professions funding

Therium

For our litigation finance business we have raised new third party funds via Limited Liability Partnerships (LLP's) in a difficult economic climate. We continue to fund a selective group of litigation cases either directly from our own seed investment or from these partnerships. Our success in selecting cases for funding is reflected in the returns to date achieved on committed funds of 207% as reported to investors in our recent equity raising.

We continue to see a good pipeline of cases coming forward for funding and an increasing number of discussions with third parties who wish to invest funds in such cases.

Trade Finance Partners Limited

This investment business commenced writing business at the beginning of 2011 and is already exceeding our expectations. We have seen a solid pipeline of trade funding opportunities arise where SME's have either been unable to obtain bank finance or our facilities can operate in a complementary way to conventional bank facilities. Again we see strong prospects for this business for 2011/12.

Credit Asset Management Limited

I am delighted that following our successful equity fund raising we have been able to finalise our investment with this strong and experienced management team. Their previous track record with Universal Leasing enables them to commence trading quickly and I am delighted to report that we will start making advances from this platform in July this year. CAML is targeting short and long term professional practice lending and asset backed lending to the SME sector. It is led by Michael Hughes and James Frost who were responsible for developing Universal Leasing Limited, a successful SME and professional services leasing business. Chris Boobyer, its Chairman, has over 30 years' experience in financial services, including senior positions with Barclays Asset Finance.

In addition to these investment platforms we have continued to provide loans to the legal profession and other related parties and in May this year we also announced a new joint venture named Novitas Futures between City of London Law Funding Limited and Novitas Investments Limited, an independent financial adviser targeting high net worth litigation clients.CAML has also assumed responsibility for managing Professions Funding Limited (previously named St Helen's Finance Legal Funding Limited ) as part of its remit for professional practice lending.

Other Investments

Meanwhile our investment in 'The Munro Fund' managed by Fundamental Tracker Investment Management (FTIM) has continued to receive favourable press comment but has only had limited success in attracting new funds to manage under its platform. It did however succeed in attracting its first fund of funds investment from 7IM late last year and we are hopeful of building on that.

Similarly our investment in FX Capital Limited continues to progress and we have recently seen this business attract new capital to support its growth.

Dividend

Given our growth in net assets and our continued expectations for the current trading period the board has decided to recommend a dividend of a further 1.0 pence per share making a total dividend of 1.5 pence for the current year.

We intend to improve on this in future years.

Subject to approval at the Annual General Meeting to be held at 10am on Thursday 8 September 2011 at Painters' Hall, 9 Little Trinity Lane, London, EC4V 2AD, the final dividend will be paid on 23 September 2011 to shareholders on the register of members as at the close of business on 26 August 2011. The ex dividend date will therefore be 24 August 2011.

Prospects

We are very encouraged in the progress to date in our major investment platforms. Some of our resource stocks have traded down in recent weeks but we are confident in overall valuations against the fundamentals for each stock.

I am sure we can continue to grow our business in the coming year.

Eric Anstee

27 June 2011

Consolidated Statement of comprehensive income for year ended 31 March 2011

 Consolidated statement of changes in equity 2011

Consolidated balance sheet as at 31 March 2011

Consolidated statement of cash flows for the year ended 31 March 2011

Notes

1. The financial information contained in this preliminary announcement does not constitute full accounts as defined in section 434 of the Companies Act 2006 and has been extracted from the statutory accounts for the year ended 31 March 2011. The auditors have issued an unqualified report on these statutory accounts. The statutory accounts for the year ended 31 March 2010 have been filed with the Registrar of Companies and the statutory accounts for the year ended 31 March 2011 will be filed with the Registrar of Companies in due course.

2. Basic earnings per share is calculated by dividing the profit attributable to equity holders of the group by the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during the year, less those held in treasury by the company, of 10,510,308 (2010: 9,814,387). The calculation of the diluted earnings per share divides this profit by a revised weighted average number of shares 11,115,199 (2010: 9,814,387). The increase relates to dilutive share options.

3. The directors recommend the payment of a final dividend for the year of 1.0p per ordinary share (2010: 0.5p).

4. Administrative expenses

*Payroll costs do not include fees paid to non-executive directors.

Directors' emoluments excluding the non-vested portion of the incentive award of £362,420 (2010: £234,393) are shown in the report of the Remuneration Committee which will be published in the annual report. The notional value of the non-vested portion of the award is £258,972 (2010: £103,780)

Fees due to auditors

5. Related party transactions and directors' remuneration

Directors' emoluments are disclosed in the part of the directors' remuneration report subject to audit. The aggregate emoluments paid to directors during the year were £223,931 (2010: £145,644), awards under the incentive scheme totalled £388,465 (2010: £152,529) and compensation for loss of office totalled £Nil (2010: £40,000).

EE Anstee, a director of City of London Group plc has £30,000 (2010: £22,500) invested in a fund managed by Therium Capital Management Limited a subsidiary of City of London Group plc.

A Summary of Total Remuneration is as follows:

Total Remuneration

(a) DR Walton Masters resigned on 2 September 2009.

(b) H Lafferty became Non-executive Chairman on 2 September 2009, He had previously been a non-executive director.

(c) EE Anstee was appointed on 11 November 2009.

(d) JCW Kent was appointed on 11 November 2009.

(e) JW Greenhalgh became a non-executive director on 21 August 2009, previously he had been Chairman and Managing Director.

The directors' interests in the deferred elements of the long term incentive scheme are as follows

Deferred element of incentive scheme charge in accounts at fair value

6. 'Available-for-sale' assets

7. Called-up share capital

The company holds 190,273 shares in treasury at 31 March 2011. (2010: 207,099)

During the year the company sold 16,826 (2010: 167,901) ordinary shares of £0.10p with an aggregate nominal value of £1,683 (2010: £16,790). These shares were held in treasury. Distributable reserves have been increased by £4,935 (2010: £49,248) being the consideration recovered for these shares.

Annual General Meeting:

The Annual General Meeting will take place at 10am on Thursday 8 September 2011 at Painters' Hall, 9 Little Trinity Lane, London, EC4V 2AD. The notice of meeting will be sent to shareholders with the annual report.