Spark Ventures has raised £10.1m from a placing of stock, a further £3.8m from stock swaps and will raise up to £3.1m via an open offer. They plan to put the money towards a new investment strategy and appoint Gresham House as its investment adviser. Gresham House is buying into Spark Ventures’ outgoing management company, SPARK […]
Aurora Russia has published results covering the year to the end of March 2015. The net asset value fell from 27.9p to 17.5p over the period. A large chunk of the decline relates to the fall in the Rouble Sterling exchange rate and a fall in the value of the company’s stake in Unistream from £8m […]
BlackRock World Mining made a $12m investment in Avanco Resources (a Brazilian copper play) in August 2014. Today it has announced the receipt of $4m from the company which is the first payment under the royalty contract. They say Avanco successfully completed an equity raising earlier in the year, which combined with the $12 million BlackRock […]
http://www.moneyobserver.com/news/21-07-2015/discount-trends-big-names-big-prices Investment trusts with big name managers saw their share prices soar over the second quarter as investors sought out the best active management.
UK smaller companies funds feature quite prevalently in the lists on the back of a decisive election result in the UK and some funds close to the end of their lives made significant progress during the quarter for stock specific reasons. http://whichinvestmenttrust.com/the-investment-trust-winners-and-losers-in-q2/
Fresnillo, the world’s largest primary silver miner, has announced first half silver production results up almost 11% from the corresponding period of 2014. The company produced 23.9 Moz of silver in the six months to end June 2015 as its Saucito II mine, Mexico, commenced production. Full year silver production guidance remains on track at […]
Dexion Absolute has consulted shareholders about its idea to amend its investment strategy and decided not to take it forward. Instead the directors have said that if any class of shares trades at an average 5% discount or wider for the three months from 1 July 2015 to 30 September 2015 or from 1 January 2016 […]
Temple Bar, managed by Alastair Mundy (pictured) has released its interim results for the half year ended 30 June 2015. During this time, the trusts NAV total return of 4.5% beat that of the FTSE All-Share Index of 1.5%. The biggest contributor during the period was TNT Express, which received a bid from Fedex, whilst building products […]
CEB Resources has published its results for the year ended 30 April 2015. These show a loss in the period of US$ 122,000 with the NAV per share decreasing from 0.3 US cents in April 2014 to 0.2 US cents in April 2015. During the year, the company exited all of its coal investments in Poland and Australia […]
NextEnergy Solar Fund has announced that it has signed a £22.7m debt facility with NIBC Bank. This has been drawn down in full to finance its Cock Hill and Llwyndu projects (the total investment in the projects combined amounts to £32.7m). The facility has a 12-month duration, with a further 12-month extension available. The company […]
Fair Oaks Income Fund announced on 22 June 2015 that it was giving consideration to potentially issuing some ordinary shares or C-shares. The company has now followed this up with an announcement that, following consultation with certain existing and potential shareholders, it is making arrangements for a potential issue of up to 200 million C Shares at an […]
Shaftesbury, the REIT focused on London’s West End, saw an announcement yesterday from entities controlled by the ‘Lee Family’ (principally through Mr Samuel Tak Lee) of a tender offer to acquire up to 9.3% of the shares in Shaftesbury at a price of 888p per share. If the tender is successful, the Lee family will control 13.2% […]
Starwood European Real Estate announced yesterday (20 July 2015) a placing to raise up to £15m before costs with the proceeds of the placing to be used to fund a loan currently in execution and other transactions that the Investment Adviser believes have a high probability of execution in the short term. Starwood has subsequently announced today […]
Shanta Gold produced 14,664 oz of gold in Q2 2015, some 8% higher than Q1 but significantly down from Q2 2014 production of 21,940 oz. Cash Costs were US$834/oz.(up 10% on Q2 2014) and All in Sustaining Costs (AISC) US$1,157/oz (up 21%). The main reasons for the decrease in production, and increase in costs, were […]
UK small-caps has emerged as the stand-out sector for investment trusts in Q2 2015, according to statistics from QuotedData. The report, published 16 June, showed that UK smaller companies-focused mandates accounted for the majority of best-performing funds in NAV terms for the quarter. http://www.portfolio-adviser.com/news/1023811/uk-companies-trusts-dominate-q2-performers
QuotedData reports that the investment trust sector expanded by about GBP2.4 billion over the second quarter of 2015, taking in close to GBP2.9 billion and handing back just over GBP450 million. The firm comments that many of the funds raising money are not designed to throw off high levels of income, suggesting that investors are […]
Schroder Real Estate has published results for the year ended 31 March 2015. The NAV total return for the year was 24.4% which includes an 18.7% capital uplift in the NAV to 57.7p. In addition the NAV has risen further in Q2 2015 to hit 59.1p. The dividend for the year was 2.48p (down from […]
Nimrod Sea Assets has published its first set of results covering the period from 1 March 2014 to 31 March 2015. The fund has 54% of its capital invested in seven companies holding nine vessels. The falling oil price has led to problems of varying degrees across six of the seven investments. The two most serious […]
World Trust Fund has announced results for the year ended 31 March 2015 that show it outperforming the MSCI All Country World Index and the MSCI All Country World ex USA Index. Over the year the fund returned 24.2% on net assets and 25.4% on share price as compared to 11.2% for the ex USA […]
Alpha Pyrenees has sold the Connecta Retail Park investment in Córdoba, one of the principal cities in the Andalucia region, for €15.3m – 100k more than its 31 December 2014 valuation. The property totals approximately 16,880 square metres and is located on the Avenida de Cadiz, the main access route from the A4 motorway to the […]
HICL Infrastructure has announced the proposed acquisition of a 99.9% interest in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ‘E’ Division Headquarters P3 Project (“RCMP”) in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada for consideration of approximately C$53m. The Project is being acquired from the InfraRed Infrastructure Fund III, a fund managed by HICL’s Investment Adviser; and therefore, as a matter […]
Black Sea Property has just raised £1.52m before expenses to put towards its new investment policy of acquiring property assets in Bulgaria. However, until it has invested the money, it is failing to implement the policy and, as it is now a year since the last of the company’s old portfolio was sold off, it […]
Princess Private Equity has announced that Partners Group, its investment advisor, has sold its controlling interest in US security services provider Universal Services of America (“Universal”). The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks. They say the exit valuation represents an uplift to Universal’s carrying value as at 31 May 2015 and will be reflected […]
Independent Investment Trust generated a 13.9% return on net assets over the six months ended 31 May 2015 – well ahead of both the FTSE All-Share Index and the FTSE World Index which returned 7.5% and 6.0% respectively. The interim dividend is unchanged at 2p. Within the technology and telecommunications weighting in the portfolio, two Chinese […]
Investment trusts specialising in smaller companies were among the top performers of the past few months after a decisive election result improved confidence in the sector, new research shows. But commodity and Asia-focused investment trusts were among the stragglers as investors shunned stocks exposed to an economic slowdown in China or a US rate rise, […]
JPMorgan Brazil published its results covering the year that ended on 30 April 2015 last night. During the year the company’s return on net assets was -14.6% and the return to shareholders was -11.9%, reflecting a narrowing of the discount from 9.1% to 6.4%. JPMorgan Brazil underperformed its benchmark, the MSCI Brazil 10/40 Index (in sterling terms), which returned […]
Last night, after the market had closed, Marwyn Value Investments announced it would sell 26.5m shares in Entertainment One – about 9% of the company. The mechanism it is using to do this is called an accelerated bookbuild.. This morning Entertainment One’s shares are down 10% on the news. At the current price, the stake […]
International Public Partnerships Limited has announced that the Bazalgette Consortium comprising INPP, Allianz, Amber Infrastructure Group, Dalmore Capital Limited, DIF and Swiss Life Asset Managers has been appointed preferred bidder for the Thames Tideway Tunnel (“TTT”) licence. INPP will invest up to £210m in the project, with the residual risk capital being funded by the remaining […]
Jupiter Green Investment Trust underperformed the MSCI World Small cap. Index by some margin over the course of the year ended 31 March 2015 delivering a return of 5.1% against the index’s 14.6%. The share price return was 4.4%. The dividend halved from 1.1p to 0.55p. Performance more or less offset buybacks to leave the […]
Yesterday Origo Partners announced that the Isle of Man Court handed down judgment in favor of it, regarding a complaint raised by Brooks MacDonald in relation to terms of convertible zero dividend preference shares issued on March 8, 2011. Today Brooks Macdonald Asset Management (International) Ltd., notified Origo Partners that it was making a claim against it. Brooks Macdonald believes […]
