HgCapital Trust’s (HGT) newest shareholder, Valhalla Ventures, has raised its stake for a second time, lifting its position in the private equity fund to 5.4% last Thursday, according to a filing yesterday. Valhalla, the holding company of Preqin founder Mark O’Hare (pictured) and his wife Linda, now owns over 24.7m shares which at Monday’s closing price values the stake at £114m. This is equal to Jupiter Fund Management which bought the trust as the shares fell in early February on fears that AI competition would hurt its investments in unquoted software providers. HGT shares have rallied from a 4 February low of 380p to 465p but are still below their 507p level on 27 January before the sell-off. They stand on a 16% discount, double their one-year average with the company having bought back 400,000 shares and holding them in treasury.

DL Invest, the 18% shareholder in Abrdn European Logistics Income (ASLI) seeking shareholder approval on Friday to take over the real estate investment trust, has given its biggest hint yet of the focus on Poland the fund will have if its wind-down is stopped, although the board is opposed given how far advanced the process is. In a letter to shareholders last Friday, the privately owned Polish investment and development platform, said: “Poland’s central location, developed infrastructure and direct access to the German market position it as a natural logistics gateway to Europe. Yet direct exposure to this growth market remains limited for many UK-based investors,” it said while pointing out that “ASLI represents a unique vehicle through which investors can access this structural growth corridor in a listed format.” It added: “Poland continues to offer yield spreads above core Western European markets, particularly in logistics and industrial real estate. Combined with improving market maturity and increasing institutional participation, this creates a compelling risk-adjusted return profile.” Ian Worboys, chief executive of European Green Logistic Space, an adviser to DL Invest, also issued a letter. Giving his “independent, professional view”, Worboys said that “the European logistics real estate market is now entering a phase of normalisation following heightened macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility. In my professional judgement, continuing a wind-down strategy at this stage entails material risks, including forced asset disposals, crystallisation of structural pricing discounts and potential long-term value erosion.”

Cordiant Digital Infrastructure (CORD) fund manager Steven Marshall ploughed over £546,000 into the investment company’s shares on Friday as they continued to trade on a 26% discount to net asset value which he believes is “mispriced”. This takes his total holding to 15.2m shares and lifts the amount held by Cordiant Capital staff to 17.6m shares or 2.3% of the company. CORD yesterday reached its fifth anniversary since launch having generated 66% total NAV growth from its investments in central European datacentres and the fibre and towers that connect them with customers. However, the undervalued shares have returned just 27% due to the chronic discount.   

Agronomics (ANIC), the £63m “clean food” fund where financier Jim Mellon is the executive chairman and largest shareholder, made an underlying 11.7% gain in the second half of last year with net asset value reaching nearly £140m and NAV per share rising from 12.34p to 13.78p at 31 December to put the 6.2p shares on a 55% discount. Gains in Blue Nalu and Liberation Bioindustries were offset by news in December of an £11.9m write-down in Dutch cultured meat producer Meatable.