Ian has recently taken over as fund manager of Henderson Private Equity Investment Trust PLC.
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Ian has over twenty years of finance experience encompassing private equity and infrastructure investment, senior debt lending and major corporate and project financial advisory assignments. Ian also manages Henderson Equity Partners' fund of funds portfolios. He joined Henderson Equity Partners in 2005 having previously worked for Citigroup and Charterhouse Bank Limited. Ian has a BA (Hons) in Modern History from Oxford University.
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Fund Manager's Commentary - December 2009
2009 proved to be a dramatic year for share prices in the listed private equity sector. At the start of the year, the sector had already experienced the severe falls of the final quarter of 2008. Despite this, prices fell further to reach new and extreme lows in March, only to then benefit from a strong rally from April through to September. Overall, data from research by Cazenove shows that UK listed private equity fund of funds produced total returns of 38% during the year, with Henderson Private Equity Investment Trust (HPEQ) providing the third highest total return of 55% within this group of eleven companies.
Despite the recovery in its share price, at the time of writing, HPEQ is trading at a discount to net asset value of 57%. Barring a double-dip recession and/or a serious decline in public market comparators, this represents an attractive buying opportunity for a fund of funds that has a good quality existing portfolio and should benefit from the generally favourable private equity investment conditions forecast over the next few years as its current private equity fund commitments are drawn down.
As stated previously, HPEQ’s listed portfolio has provided the fund manager with opportunities to raise cash by selling certain investments that are not core to HPEQ’s mid-market European buy-out focus. Following October’s sale of Quorum Oil and Gas Technology Fund, further disposals have now been completed at prices above 31 December 2008 year-end values. Cash raised from these disposals, along with committed bank facilities, existing cash balances and proceeds from limited partnership distributions, will be used as required to finance HPEQ’s existing private equity fund commitments.
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