New investment trust Smithson raises £822m – Smithson Investment Trust (SSON), a newly established investment trust has successfully raised a total of £822.5 million as a result of its IPO.
It is believed to be the largest recorded UK-listed investment trust launch.
Smithson announces successful capital raising
- Applications have been received under the Initial Issue for 82,250,956 Ordinary Shares, which will be issued at a price of £10 per Ordinary Share
- Of these 38,823,927 Ordinary Shares were issued in accordance with the initial placing, 28,187,785 Ordinary Shares were issued as a result of the Offer for Subscription and 15,239,244 Ordinary Shares were issued following the Intermediaries Offer.
- All applications will be met in full.
Trading in the shares will commence at 8.00 a.m. on Friday, 19 October 2018
Applications have been made for the admission of the Ordinary Shares to the premium segment of the Official List and trading on the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market for listed securities (“Admission”). It is expected that Admission will become effective and that unconditional dealings in the Ordinary Shares will commence at 8.00 a.m. on Friday, 19 October 2018.
The Ordinary Shares will trade under the ticker: SSON (ISIN: GB00BGJWTR88)
Comment from the chairman of Smithson Investment Trust, Mark Pacitti
“I am delighted that the supplementary prospectus we issued will allow a broad range of investors to participate fully in the exciting opportunity presented and the board of Smithson look forward to governing this new investment trust on behalf of all Shareholders.”
Comment from Terry Smith, CEO and CIO of Fundsmith LLP, Smithson’s Investment Manager
“Our thesis that many of the existing small and mid cap funds in the market are anachronistic by being overly home biased and that there was a gap for a quality small and mid cap global equity fund appears to have been borne out by a wide range of investors subscribing for the Smithson offer. In addition, our innovative step to absorb all the issue costs as the investment manager has helped to remove the concern that investors participating in the IPO would be subject to an initial loss from these costs. I look forward to working with our portfolio management team to deploy the funds raised into the compelling growth companies we have identified.”
More on Smithson Investment Trust
With the Smithson Investment Trust, Fundsmith aims to provide investors with a similar investment experience to the Fundsmith Equity Fund, an open-ended mutual fund. The older fund targets (and to date, has delivered) a superior risk-adjusted return over the long term. However, the investment trust will aim to do this by investing in a group of global small and mid capitalisation listed companies, which the managers believe can compound in value over many years, if not decades. This is the thinking behind the name, Smithson.
Smithson Investment Trust’s investment policy is to invest in shares issued by small and mid sized companies with a market capitalisation (at the time of investment) of between £500 million to £15 billion (although the company expects that the average market capitalisation of the companies in which it invests to be approximately £7 billion) on a long-term, global basis.The company’s approach is to be a long-term investor in its chosen stocks. It will not adopt short-term trading strategies. Accordingly, it will pursue its investment policy by investing in approximately 25 to 40 companies.
SSON : New investment trust Smithson raises £822m