Smithson Investment Trust, run by star fund manager Terry Smith, looks set to achieve the biggest London flotation by a trust after beating its initial fundraising targets.
The trust raised a record £822.5mln, exceeding the revised £600mln target it announced last week when it said it was seeing significant investor demand. The original target that was set last month was £250mln.
The fundraise beats the previous peak set by Neil Woodford’s Patient Capital trust in 2015. Patient Capital raised £800mln ahead of its listing on the London Stock Exchange.
Applications have been received under the initial issue of just over 82.2mln ordinary shares at a price of £10 each. Smithson said all applications will be met in full and trading will begin on Friday.
Smith, who is acting as the company’s chief investment manager and is also the chief executive of Fundsmith, said: "Our thesis that many of the existing small and mid-cap funds in the market are anachronistic by being overly home biased and that there was a gap for a quality small and mid-cap global equity fund appears to have been borne out by a wide range of investors subscribing for the Smithson offer.
“In addition, our innovative step to absorb all the issue costs as the investment manager has helped to remove the concern that investors participating in the IPO would be subject to an initial loss from these costs.”