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Telegraph.co.uk – RIT Capital Partners, Lord Rothschild’s investment vehicle, had £36.5m ($58.3m) allocated to Atticus at the end of March 2008, but the company’s latest annual report shows the money has been entirely withdrawn.
The trust had invested in Atticus since 2000, and the holding was its largest single hedge fund investment last year.
ShareCast – Private equity group BlueGem is to take a 40% stake in stockbroker Panmure Gordon in a move that will inject £17.3m of capital into the broker.Panmure Gordon has placed 72m new shares with BlueGem at 24p per share.
The acquisition of the stake represents BlueGem’s fourth investment and its first in the financial services sector. The company was formed in late 2006 by experienced investment bankers and fund managers to make investments in mid-market companies, predominantly in the UK and Italy.
The net proceeds from the placing will ‘significantly strengthen the company’s balance sheet’, the company said, giving it regulatory assets in excess of £40m, more than three times more than its required regulatory capital.
Independent – RAB Capital, the troubled London-based hedge fund, yesterday agreed to sell its Asian business as it tries to shore up its finances.
The fund manager, which on top of the general woes affecting the industry has made wrong calls including buying shares in now-nationalised lender Northern Rock, said it was selling the assets and business of its loss-making Northwest brand for £1m to its original owners, at a big book loss. As recently as last June, RAB valued Northwest at £20m. However, the sale will allow the fund manager to save between £3m and £4m in costs annually, and a spokesman said that after tax adjustments the writedown would be closer to £9m.
Northwest’s assets under management, held in three funds, were approximately $300m at the end of December. On a pro-forma basis, the business and assets it is selling generated pretax profit of around £9m in 2007, but analysts believe Northwest may have slipped into the red last year.
