Industry insiders up stakes in HgCapital after sell-off

Preqin founder Mark O'Hare and Jupiter Fund Management took advantage of the £2.2bn trust's discounted shares.

HgCapital (HGT) has found its feet since a sell-off in software companies wiped a quarter off its value in a matter of days earlier this month, with the £2.2bn trust staging a 19.3% recovery over the past two weeks.

Its steep decline attracted Valhalla Ventures − the investment vehicle for Mark and Linda O’Hare − to its register. Mr O’Hare founded alternative asset data giant Preqin in 2003, later selling it to BlackRock for £2.6bn. 

The firm disclosed a 3.3% stake in HGT on February 6, increasing this to 4.4% a few days later in a near-£94m bet on the trust’s recovery.

On the Tuesday of the crash, Jupiter Fund Management also moved in, acquiring a 5.5% position totaling over 25m shares to become the trust’s second largest institutional investor. 

Confidence was further bolstered from within the boardroom, with six directors—including chair Jim Strang — snapping up shares worth up to £85,000.

As its discount stretched out, the trust also committed to ramping up buybacks, announcing a fresh programme for up to 15% of its issued capital, or 68.6m shares.

The initial slide was triggered by AI developer Anthropic releasing a new autonomous legal productivity tool, raising existential questions over the long-term relevance of software-as-a-service companies, which the private equity trust specialises in. 

HGT’s longest-held asset, Norwegian software giant Visma, was reported to have put off a planned listing for early 2026 to allow the volatility to subside. 

The board judges the sell-off unjustly ‘indiscriminate’, creating an attractive opening for new investors. Writing earlier in February, co-manager Matthew Brockman said products released from large AI companies in recent months had demonstrated a ‘step change in performance for business applications’ but that incumbent software developers maintain a ‘huge advantage’ in developing their own AI tools. 

‘These are companies that have spent years mastering a difficult workflow, using a complicated set of rules and processes combined with proprietary data and deep integrations, both up and down stream. Together, this provides a huge advantage when building agentic products on top,’ he said. 

As of yesterday, shares in the trust are still trading well below net asset value (NAV), at a 16.1% discount.