Jon Smith, chief executive of recovery play First Artist Corporation, plans to take the diversified sports player management group into TV programme-making as it prepares two acquisitions in the entertainment agency field. After steering AIM-quoted First Artist from £493,000 losses to a pre-tax profit of £809,000 in the year to October, Smith, who has been working with TV sports presenters Suzanne Shaw, Andy Gray and Andy Townsend, says the company will seek deals whereby broadcasting companies put up the investment and First Artist provides the content and ‘owns a piece of the action’.

First Artist, which recently persuaded ex-boxing promoter Jarvis Astaire to become chairman, expects to expand the role of its Finishing Touch event management arm, which already works in the education field with Government backing. Apart from the acquisitions already in his sights, Smith is on the look-out for more.

‘We have £1 million in the bank,’ he argues, ‘and the company is only 30 per cent geared.’ He adds that key shareholders and others have also offered to back a deal if it looks right.

Smith, who is switching company broker from Shore Capital to Arbuthnot, says he aims to reduce First Artist’s dependence on football to between 20 and 25 per cent in 12 months. At 7p, compared with 2001’s float price of 50p, the company’s shares have still not recovered from past soccer-related traumas, though Smith points out it has earned more than £4 million from football transfers worth a gross £60 million.

It could repay a speculative recovery punt.