Baronsmead venture capital trusts (VCTs) shored up Strategic Equity Capital (SEC) with a £10m investment two months before the Gresham House stablemate announced a 100% tender offer due to take place in October. Second quarter updates for the £200m Baronsmead Venture Trust (BVT) and £204m Baronsmead Second Venture Trust (BMD) revealed they each “invested £5m […]
Saba Capital and investors who followed the activist hedge fund in selling out of CQS Natural Resources Growth and Income (CYN) in its tender offer have missed out on a glittering 45% summer rally in the mining fund’s shares as gold and silver have shot up. The £194m investment trust, one of seven targeted by […]
Annual results from UIL and Brown Advisory US Smaller Companies, dire interims from British & American, better half-year progress at Marwyn Value Investors and Baker Steel Resources, a fee cut at BlackRock Greater Europe and more beneficial M&A at RTW Biotech and International Biotechnology. UIL (UTL), a £286m split capital investment trust run by Utilico […]
Fair Oaks Income (FAIR), a £219m investor in high-yield corporate debt known as collateralised loan obligations (CLO), has proposed removing the 2028 maturity date of the master fund through which it invests. Responding to market changes, which had seen CLOs set for longer periods with terms frequently reset and extended, the Guernsey feeder fund said […]
Gore Street Energy Storage (GSF) has confirmed it made additional payments of over £5m in the past two financial years to its fund manager but denied these fees for essential services had not been properly disclosed. In a statement to the stock exchange the international battery fund said it wanted to correct “inaccurate and misleading […]
CVC Income and Growth (CVCG), the top-performing listed loan and bond fund over five and ten years, has launched a £60m share issue in response to investor demand for high yields and a haven from volatile markets. Having issued 39m shares in the past 12 months and seen its stock trade at a small premium […]
Under-pressure JPMorgan Emerging Markets (JMG) is proposing to more than double its dividend and change its name to attract more investors to shares trading 9.5% below their real value. In annual results for the year to 30 June, the £1.2bn investment trust said it would ask shareholders to approve lifting payouts to 1% of NAV […]
Merchants Trust (MRCH) regrets not holding Rolls-Royce (RR), the engineering group making a remarkable comeback under chief executive Tufan Erginbilgic. Shares in the aerospace engineer and small nuclear reactor manufacturer soared 78% in the six months to 31 July, a major contributor to the £938m UK equity income trust underperforming in its half-year results released […]
Fidelity European Trust (FEV) has completed its combination with Henderson European Trust (HET) after shareholders in the latter approved the merger on Friday. FEV will buy £462.7m net assets from HET for the issue of over 111.9m new shares. Added to FEV’s net assets of £1.7bn this will give the enlarged company over £2.1bn, enshrining […]
Nick Greenwood’s 40-year career in the investment trust industry had a chancy start. In the early 1990s, investment trusts were having a moment. An asset-hungry sales director at Christos saw the potential for a fund of investment trusts. Greenwood, then a stockbroker for the group, was put in charge, and the rest is history. Greenwood […]
Activist hedge fund Saba Capital plans to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) to achieve its goal of having a vehicle targeting investment companies and trusts on wide share price discounts. The Saba Capital Investment Trusts Ucits ETF is awaiting approval by regulators in Ireland, where it would be domiciled, the Financial Times reported. It will […]
Digital 9 Infrastructure (DGI9), the worst example of value destruction among investment companies in the past three years, has stabilised its portfolio in the first half of the year and should be ready to return what is left of shareholders’ capital in early 2026 after the revelation that its accounts were massively overvalued two years […]
Octopus Titan VCT (OTV2), the struggling £403m technology venture capital trust, has decided not to declare an interim dividend after posting another half-year of underperformance. “We recognise that this outcome will be disappointing to shareholders; however, dividends are ordinarily a distribution of investment gains (of which a material proportion should be realised rather than unrealised), […]
Abrdn New India lifts the maximum amount it can hold in a single stock; half-year results from Phoenix Spree Deutschland and CVC Income & Growth; plus updates from Baker Steel Resources, UIL and Pantheon International. Abrdn New India (ANII) amends its policy on single stock exposure to provide the fund manager with more flexibility following […]
Petershill Partners prepares to delist after four unsuccessful years on the UK stock market while India Capital Growth, Dunedin Income Growth, Pantheon Infrastructure, NB Private Equity and Aurora UK Alpha issue half-year results and Picton Property completes the sale of its largest office. Petershill Partners (PHLL) shares jump 33% after the £2.5bn Goldman Sachs fund […]
Manchester and London (MNL), the tech-laden global fund spectacularly riding the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, has halted share buybacks and share purchases by insiders in an effort to preserve its investment trust status and avoid a damaging tax bill. In its annual report issued yesterday evening the £331m company said the free float of shares […]
Target Healthcare (THRL), the £583m care home investor whose shares trailed on a 22% discount, has sold nine properties for £85.9m at an 11.6% premium to their 30 June valuation. Kenneth MacKenzie, chief executive of Target Fund Managers, which runs the £712m portfolio, hailed it as “landmark” deal, the largest disposal in the real estate investment […]
3i Group (III), the £39bn private equity giant, says weaker consumer spending in France and Germany combined with strikes in France have weighed on Action, the European discount retailer that accounts for around two thirds of its assets, but that its private equity and infrastructure portfolios are “performing resiliently against a subdued macroeconomic environment”. While […]
The Association of Investment Companies has again appealed to the government to amend its pension schemes bill in the House of Lords as time runs out to prevent the exclusion of London-listed closed-end funds. The bill, which has passed through the House of Commons, will give the government power to compel pension schemes to invest […]
(Updated with our comment) Gresham House Energy Storage (GRID) will only pay a minimum dividend of 0.11p per share next month as it focuses on investment in growth and upgrades to its battery portfolio. In half-year results today, the £412m investment trust said it would resume dividend payments that were suspended last year in response […]
A 100 for 1 share split at Lindsell Train, half-year results from Baillie Gifford China Growth and North American Income, update from HarbourVest Global Private Equity and a fund raise from Yellow Cake, the uranium investor. Lindsell Train (LTI) investment trust has implemented the 100 for 1 share split announced at its annual results in […]
RM Funds has said it will call another extraordinary general meeting of Gore Street Energy Storage (GSF) shareholders if the company does not improve levels of disclosure. Responding to last week’s annual general meeting when the company acknowledged that an estimated £5m of annual payments to fund manager Gore Street Capital had not been disclosed, […]
Spencer Adair, lead fund manager of Monks (MNKS) investment trust since 2021, will retire after 26 years with investment group Baillie Gifford next March. Although his four years at the helm of the £2.5bn global fund have been tough with the group’s growth style falling out of favour, the shares have recently surpassed their 2021 […]
A partial recovery in the share price of Great Portland Estates (GPE) this month may bolster the morale of BlackRock fund managers struggling against continued outflows from the UK stock market and unjustifiable slides in some of their favoured holdings. Fears of sticky inflation and a yawning budget deficit over the summer put most property […]
Pantheon Infrastructure (PINT), the most highly-rated London-listed infrastructure fund, has secured a US renewable investment that looks immune to the clampdown on the sector by President Trump. The £540m international portfolio of renewable, digital, transport and utility has committed £30m to invest in Californian energy and data centre developer Intersect Power. The investment, funded by cash and […]
Octopus Renewable Infrastructure (ORIT) has launched a five-year plan to nearly double the size of the investment company to £1bn through improved capital allocation and increased investment in higher-risk, higher-return construction assets and renewable developers. Chair Phil Austin said more than 90% of shareholders backed the continuation of the company in June but had made […]
Arnhold, the US fund manager opposed to the merger of Ocean Wilsons (OCN) with Hansa Investment Company (HANA), has been granted time by a court in Bermuda to prepare its objection. A court hearing in Bermuda yesterday accepted the New York firm’s request for four weeks to prepare its case against the merger of the […]
Pacific Horizon (PHI), the £618m pan-Asia trust run by Roderick Snell and Ben Durrant at Baillie Gifford, continued to underperform in the second half of its financial year, annual results show. As a result, over the year to 31 July the underlying total return in net asset value (NAV) was 8.3%, below the 17.1% increase […]
Achilles Investment Company (AIC), the £58m investment company activist launched in February, has strayed beyond its closed-end fund remit by taking a stake in private hospital operator Spire Healthcare (SPI). The Guernsey investment company run by Robert Naylor, former chair of Hipgnosis Songs, is one of four Harwood Capital funds to have recently disclosed a […]
Arnhold, the US value investor, is taking its fight against the merger of Ocean Wilsons (OCN) and Hansa Investment Company (HANA) to the court today. According to Ocean Wilsons, which last month rejected Arnhold’s criticisms that the transaction was “unfair” to its shareholders, the New York-based firm plans to appear at the court sanction hearing […]
