Welcome to the 11th CONKERS’ CORNER. In this interview I have the pleasure of speaking with Mark Bentley @marben100 on Twitter.

Mark’s career started in the IT industry with Logica in 1980, where one of the notable projects he worked on was the Giotto Halley’s Comet intercept mission for the European Space Agency. In 1984, Mark took his first tentative step into investing. He admits that his initial investment approach, was one of an undisciplined approach where he did not give his strategy a great deal of thought. Although as he points out, his Tech background influenced him not to invest in any Tech companies during the tech boom and safeguarded him from the Dot-com bust!

With his IT Services & Software Development background Mark decided to start his own IT services business in 1987, Anvil Technology Ltd. He went on to run this business with great success for 14 years.

For the past few years, whilst remaining as a full-time investor, Mark has also been a proactive and passionate Director of @ShareSocUK http://www.sharesoc.org/index.html ShareSoc is dedicated to the support of individual investors and shareholders rights.

Having refined his investing strategy over 34 years his approach is now one that takes a much deeper thought process, which focuses on research; asset allocation, intrinsic value and taking a top down view.