Literacy Capital (ticker: BOOK) joined the market in June 2021 and has seen its share price soar from 160p to around 400p due to an enormous increase in the value of its portfolio of UK unquoted businesses. Set up by Capita co-founder and ex-CEO Paul Pindar and his son Richard, Literacy aims to take a different approach to private equity, backing smaller businesses on a long-term basis and charging no performance fees. It also donates 0.9% of its NAV each year to literacy charities. Literacy raised £54m from investors in 2017/18 and despite raising no further funds, its net assets have increas...
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3i Group (ticker: III) can trace its roots back to 1945 although it didn't join the London market until 1994. Initially focused on UK private equity, it has expanded over the years into northern Europe, North America, and infrastructure. But it's not given its shareholders an easy ride, slumping in the early 2000s after dashing into technology stocks and sliding again in 2009 when it become overindebted in the run-up to the global financial crisis. Simon Borrows became 3i's CEO in 2012 and has transformed the trust's prospects, cutting offices and headcount and also concentrating its portfolio...
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HarbourVest Global Private Equity (tickers: HVPE and HVPD) was launched in late 2007 and is one of the largest funds in the private equity sector. It employs a fund-of-funds approach, investing in a range of HarbourVest vehicles that give access to a wide range of leading private equity managers and a very well-diversified underlying global portfolio of several thousand companies. It chooses not to pay a dividend but has one of the better performance records in the sector having outperformed global markets after costs by an annualised four percentage points over the past decade. There is a hig...
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Private equity trusts are having a busy and profitable year, but the discounts on these trusts remain at stubbornly wide levels. Why is that? And what is the outlook for the sector now as we enter a period of possibly higher inflation and higher interest rates? These are the among questions that I put to Helen Steers, the lead manager responsible for Pantheon International Participation (ticker: PIP), one of the biggest and most enduring trusts in the sector, in our latest Q and A. Pantheon first came to the market in 1987 and has delivered an annualised return of just under 12% per annum in t...
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HgCapital, a specialised private equity trust, has been one of the stellar performers of the last few decades, posting an annual net asset total return of 14.3% over the last 20 years. It's become increasingly focused on tech investments, particularly software and services, and often trades at a premium to net assets unlike much of the rest of the private equity sector.
Private equity has often been a difficult sector to navigate for fans of investment trusts. The charges are very high and it can be hard to get much detail on exactly what a particular trust is invested in and how well the un...
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Jonathan Davis These are the latest extracts from my weekly diary, highlighting interesting research and other odds and ends that I have read, heard or noted. Some will relate to specific stocks, others to more general market phenomena. In addition I will keep you updated on future developments and additions to the circle content.
Housekeeping update As before, if you are reading this it should mean that you have successfully logged into the Money Makers website and can see the latest content. From this weekend, the plan is for a list of premium content published in the week just gone to be ...
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