Miton UK MicroCap (MINI) has an annual redemption facility through which shareholders are entitled to request the redemption of all or part of their holding. The trust announced on 3 June 2019 that it received valid redemption requests for 14,317,907 ordinary shares for the 28 June 2019 redemption point (representing 9.4% of the issued share capital). The trust says that it expects to announce the redemption price on 1 July 2019 and, as it had previously noted, it had expected to dispatch the redemption monies by 12 July 2019. However, this will have to be delayed until mid-August.
Redemption delayed due to insufficient reserves
Ordinary shares may only be redeemed or purchased by the trust out of distributable reserves or the proceeds of a fresh issue of shares made for that purpose. The trust says that it does not currently have sufficient distributable reserves, given the size of the election and the impact of the financial year-end portfolio valuation. As a solution to this problem, MINI’s Board is proposing to cancel the trust’s share premium account to create additional distributable reserves. This should allow the trust to satisfy such redemption requests in full.
However, the cancellation of the share premium account requires the passing of a special resolution of the Company at a general meeting and the subsequent approval of the Court, and the intended timetable for these approval and the dispatch of monies is mid-August 2019. There is approximately £87 million currently standing to the credit of the trust’s share premium account. It says that it intends to publish a circular to convene a general meeting during the course of next week and this will also contain details on the timing of the Court hearings. The company says that it intends to fund the redemptions from existing cash resources.