New City High Yield Fund (NCYF) fund manager Ian “Franco” Francis said he and co-manager Darren Toner sold Aston Martin’s 10.375% 2029 bond after a controversial £550m debt financing in July by BlackRock’s private credit subsidiary HPS Investment Partners altered the debt’s asset backing. The Financial Times reported last month that bond holders were considering legal action against the luxury car maker after it moved valuable non-automotive intellectual property and branding rights to a new company in the Cayman Islands. In his latest fact sheet commentary, Francis said he used part of the proceeds to buy Virgin Media’s 7.875% 2032 bond instead. At 8.9%, NCYF is the highest yielder in the AIC Debt – Loans and Bonds sector. Its shares were flat in July but were up 8.2% year to date, the £362m company said.
Glenstone REIT lifted its stake in Alternative Income REIT (AIRE) to 29.9% on Friday buying 1.7m shares at its 70p cash offer, most likely from hedge fund manager Trium Capital which reduced its position to 2% from 3%. It said it would not buy any more ahead of this Friday’s deadline for accepting its offer. This morning it said it had just over 36% of acceptances from shareholders, including the 2.36% stake of its director Adam Smith, 14% short of the 50% it needs. Last week AEW UK REIT (AEWU) withdrew the all-share offer it had been considering, citing the opposition of Glenstone, whose offer at a 16% discount to AIRE’s net asset value has been criticised by QuotedData as too low.
Shaires Holdings (SHR), the AIM-listed investor in unquoted technology and artificial intelligence (AI) businesses, has completed the acquisition of indirect interests of $16.2m in Anthropic and $9.2m in Stripe through a $25.4m investment in a special purpose vehicle that it announced on 13 August as part of last month’s $14.3m (£10.5m) share issue. The Anthropic holding was acquired at the $965bn valuation in its Series H fund raising and at an equivalent price of around $589.01 per share. It represents about 0.001% of the equity in the AI laboratory. Stripe, a payments processor, was bought at its $159bn valuation at the tender offer in February at an equivalent price of around $63 per share. Shaires’ holding represents 0.006% of the equity.
