Morning briefing: BlackRock Frontiers hit as £51.5m of shares sold in five-yearly tender; BH Macro made 4.3% in January; plus CLIG, GCP
BlackRock Frontiers (BRFI) has taken a knock but will survive after holders of 13.7% of shares in the £381m investment trust elected to sell in the five-yearly 100% tender offer announced in December. Nearly 25.9m shares were validly tendered and will be put into a tender pool with investors receiving net asset value minus costs as the underlying holdings are sold. This means around £51.5m will be returned to shareholders, reducing the investment trust to around £330m, but still leaving it the sixth biggest listed fund in the 10-strong Global Emerging Markets sector. Mobius (MMIT), a £95m global emerging markets smaller companies trust, shrank last year when it suffered a 43.1% take-up in its three-yearly 100% tender offer.
James Carthew, head of investment company research at QuotedData, said: “I was a bit surprised to see 13.7% of BRFI’s tendered. The shares are trading close to asset value anyway, the performance track record is very good, and the prospects for emerging and frontier markets are being bolstered as money flows out of the US dollar and looks for alternative homes.”
BH Macro (BHMG), the £1.3bn Brevan Howard hedge fund that last week won the backing of its sterling shareholders in a share class continuation vote, has reported its best monthly performance since April last year. It made 4.3% for sterling shareholders and 4.4% for dollar shareholders in January with most of the gains coming from equity trades of its managers.
City of London Investment Group (CLIG), the £203m closed-end fund investor, rallied 6.8% to 410p today following good half-year results. The group increased assets under management by $400m in the second half of last year and by $1.3bn over 2025 to end the year at $11.2bn. They have risen to $11.9bn so far this year. Net fee income for the year rose to $37.3m from $35.3m with pre-tax profit up $1.4m to $14m. The interim dividend was held at 11p per share. The shares rose
GCP Infrastructure (GCP) has appointed Canaccord Genuity as joint corporate broker alongside RBC Capital Markets.
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