Oakley Capital, manager of Oakley Capital Investments (OCI), has bought a majority stake in XTEL, a Belgian business software as a service (SaaS) provider. The size of the investment was not disclosed but OCI, an £816m investment company that invests in Oakley’s private equity funds, is investing £33m through the Oakley Capital Fund VI. This […]
Pershing Square (PSH) fund manager Bill Ackman has sold most of his position in Alphabet and switched it into a new $2.1bn holding in rival “Magnificent Seven” stock Microsoft. A US regulatory filing on Friday by his firm Pershing Square Capital Management showed it had bought around 5.65m Microsoft shares in the first quarter. This […]
Update: Glenstone, the largest shareholder in Alternative Income REIT (AIRE), has launched a bid approach for the £56m real estate investment trust with a view to selling most of the company’s assets and winding it down. Shares in AIRE, the smallest London-listed commercial property fund, rose 3.9%, or 2.7p, to 72.4p on Friday after Glenstone, […]
BlackRock Smaller Companies (BRSC) chair Ronald Gould says the investment trust is looking forward to delivering “better shareholder value”, improved returns and lower costs after last month’s merger with BlackRock Throgmorton lifted its assets by £303m to £886m. However, annual results to the 28 February showed the portfolio underperformed with an 11.2% underlying investment return […]
Joe Faraday, the new fund manager of Baillie Gifford European Growth (BGEU), has moved quickly to overhaul the severely underperforming investment trust by replacing nearly a third of its stocks with big additions in defence, financials and energy. Faraday, who officially replaced Baillie Gifford colleagues Stephen Paice and Chris Davies on 1 April, listed 21 […]
Impax Environmental Markets (IEM) will buy back shares sold in the £738m exit tender offer last month at 494.76p each. The investment trust, whose board activist hedge fund Saba is seeking to replace, said all 148.2m shares validly tendered would be accepted and bought by its broker Winterflood next Tuesday. Payments and cheques will be […]
3i Group (III) has launched its first share buyback programme in 21 years after annual results revealed a further slowdown in sales at Action, the European discount retailer that accounts for around two thirds of the private equity giant’s £31.8bn portfolio. Shares in 3i Group plunged 19%, or 450p, to a two-and-a-half year low of […]
A furious row has broken out between Aquila European Renewables (AERI) and Aquila Capital with the investment company’s board accusing its fund manager of welching on a proposed sale of around half its portfolio. The £70m listed fund, whose 20-month wind-down is being overseen by activist and chair Robert Naylor, said it was examining “all […]
The UK economy delivered a surprisingly solid performance in the first quarter with 0.3% growth in March lifting gross domestic product by 0.6% in the first three months of the year, led by a rebound in retailing and construction. The Office for National Statistics said there were signs that consumers and businesses had brought forward […]
Lowland (LWI), the £372m UK equity income trust running a higher-than-normal allocation to companies outside the FTSE 100, returned 7.1% in the six months to 31 March but lagged the FTSE All-Share as blue-chip stocks once again led the way. The benchmark index rose 8.9% with shareholders in the Janus Henderson managed trust receiving 6.8% […]
