By Elliot Gulliver-Needham, Investment Reporter, CityAM, 24 February 2025:
The £54m Achilles trust will debut on the London Stock Exchange tomorrow.
Achilles Investment Company is set to start trading on the London Stock Exchange tomorrow after raising £54m to make an activist push against struggling investment trusts.
The trust, run by City veterans Christopher Mills and Robert Naylor at Harwood Capital, would be the first investment trust float on UK markets since 2023.
Naylor and Mills are best known for orchestrating the sale of Hipgnosis to Blackstone last year at a 60 per cent premium to the struggling trust’s stock price.
The duo also worked together to topple the chair of PRS REIT, while Naylor was chair of Round Hill Music Trust when it received a takeover offer.
Achilles will target a “concentrated portfolio” of investment trusts, with a focus on alternative assets like infrastructure or property.
Achilles will then seek to boost the trusts’ share prices “through constructive activism” by identifying undervalued or underperforming assets and unlocking their value..
“Wide discounts that have plagued investment companies in the alternative asset classes make just about anybody here a target,” said Richard Williams, senior analyst at QuotedData.
“Investors are clearly fed up with poor performance and inaction from boards and are now backing Harwood to repeat its successful activist ventures at Hipgnosis, Round Hill, and PRS REIT.”
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