Amati AIM VCT drops Paul Jourdan after 19 years and hires Maven

The £111m venture capital trust ends strategic review by serving notice on smaller companies fund manager Amati, appointing Maven Capital Partners to broaden its strategy.

Amati AIM VCT (AMAT ), a £111m venture capital trust, has served notice on its long-standing fund management team led by Dr Paul Jourdan at Amati Global Investors and is in talks to appoint rival Maven Capital Partners to broaden its investments from the struggling junior stock exchange.

Concluding an eight-month strategic review, chair Fiona Wollocombe said the halving in inheritance tax relief for stocks on the Alternative Investment Market announced in the October Budget had confirmed the need to find additional investment opportunities.

Maven, a leading private equity firm and VCT manager, had been picked from several interested parties to provide an ‘AIM Plus’ strategy that will combine investments in the junior market, including the Aquis Stock Exchange, with a pipeline of potential deals in private companies.

This would ‘aim to reverse the problems of persistent underperformance whilst keeping a core of underlying AIM companies in the portfolio’.

The past three years have been tough for AIM investors as liquidity in smaller companies has dried up with investors selling UK equities to globalise their portfolios, while small-cap stocks have been viewed as particularly vulnerable to higher inflation and rising interest rates.

Shares in Amati AIM VCT have rumbled from a peak of 209p in September 2021 to 74p.

The board’s decision ends a relationship with Jourdan and his team who have managed the VCT since launch in 2005 as the First State AIM VCT. The fund followed the team, which includes David Stevenson, Dr Gareth Blades and Gregor Paterson, through a stint at Noble Fund Managers before Amati was formed and through mergers with other VCTs run by Singer & Friedlander and Invesco Perpetual.

Wollocombe thanked the team for its ‘collaborative and helpful’ approach during the review, which she said highlighted the difficulty VCT managers had sourcing investment opportunities without extensive networks and the depth of resources required to invest in private companies.

Following consideration of proposals from Amati and other potential new managers, Maven had been picked for having been one of the most active managers since VCT rules changed nine years ago. It had completed 78 new investments in high growth businesses across software, cyber security, data analytics, healthcare, fintech and specialist engineering, she said.

Maven, which was formed in 2009 from a management buyout of the private equitiy business of Aberdeen Asset Management, has four VCTs in the Maven Income and Growth range (MIG1, 2, 3 and 4). It employs around 100 private equity and property executives in offices around the country. Pension adviser and wealth manager Mattioli Woods bought the business in 2021.

Wollocombe said it was one of the few VCT fund managers with experience of both AIM and private capital investment, and had made successful exits from investments this year including Quorum Cyber, Novatus Global, MirrorWeb and CB Technology.

Further details of the terms of Maven’s appointment will be revealed when finalised.