In QuotedData’s morning briefing 18 March 2021:
- NB Distressed Debt says its investment manager, Neuberger Berman Europe Limited, has offered to waive its entitlement to receive its management fee with immediate effect. The chairman says “The fee waiver recognises that it is taking longer than expected to fully realise the company’s assets due to a number of factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic, and as we outlined in our most recent quarterly update. A partial fee waiver on the smallest share class, NBDD, was already in place, but this has been replaced with a full fee waiver on all three share classes to reduce costs for shareholders.” [Well done Neuberger Berman!]
- Schroder British Opportunities has received Court approval for the transfer of £72.7m of share premium to be transferred to distributable reserves. [This allows fairly new investment companies to start life with the kind of ‘rainy day’ distributable reserves that it would take years or even decades to build naturally. It gives the board flexibility when it comes to setting dividends.]
- Fair Oaks Income says a CLO that it originally acquired in April 2017 for $27m (AIMCO 2017-A, a portfolio of broadly syndicated, US loans) has been reset. This extends the life of the CLO, which was due come out of its investment period in July 2021, by five years. It also lowers the funding cost and boosts Fair Oak’s potential returns by 4.27% a year. The CLO also now has environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors built into its loan selection process. Fair Oaks thinks this may be the first time ESG aspects have been introduced into a CLO during a reset.
- Marwyn Value Investors has been launching special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) for years. Way before it became the trendy thing to do. One it listed in December – Marwyn Acquisition Company I Limited – is to be renamed AdvancedAdvT Limited. It is looking for £130m to fund mid-cap acquisition opportunities in the software sector. Vin Murria OBE (founder Advanced Computer Software Group, which grew from an initial £12m platform acquisition in 2008 to being sold for an enterprise value of £750m to Vista Equity Partners in 2015) is the company’s chairman. Marwyn Value Investors is committing £13.4m to the fundraising in exchange for an 11.8% stake. Vin Murria is putting in £17.5m of her own money.
- Caledonia Investments has sold its shareholding in Buzz Bingo to Intermediate Capital Group for a nominal amount. It says that Covid-19 and lockdowns led to Buzz’s clubs being unable to trade for much of the past 12 months. Buzz was refinanced in the summer of 2020 as part of a company voluntary arrangement, in which Caledonia invested £22m. It was valued at nil in the end February NAV. That was 3462p, down 2.5% on the end January figure.
We also have a new investment by Hipgnosis [and it’s a good one!] and results from AVI Japan Opportunity.