The Royal County of Berkshire Pension Fund has acquired a 20% stake in asset manager Gresham House and become the cornerstone investor in the manager’s new alternative investments platform.
In an announcement on the London Stock Exchange today, Gresham House said the administering authority for the Berkshire Pension Fund had agreed to purchase 2,546,372 ordinary shares at a subscription share price of 325 pence per share.
This means Berkshire will become a ‘strategic investor’ in Gresham House and a founding investor in the manager’s new long-term capital investment platform.
Gresham House said the platform will enable large investors to cost-effectively access long-term illiquid alternative asset classes that are often uneconomical for them to monitor given their scale. It will also allow investors access to local social and infrastructure investment initiatives such as housing, while giving them co-investment rights and greater transparency, it added.
The first fund on the platform will be the Gresham House British Strategic Investment Fund (BSIF) with a target size of £300m and a focus on renewable infrastructure, housing and innovation.
Berkshire pension fund and pension fund advisory panels chairman John Lenton said investing in the BSIF will enable the fund to reduce costs and diversify its alternative and illiquid investments, as well as invest in themes identified by the Chancellor as being worthy of support.
“We will be targeting niche areas and make investments which are smaller and usually longer term than those that interest the major investment houses,” he added. “These give us the potential of a higher long-term return which is so important to a pension fund like ours which has to plan for pensions that will be drawn down many years in the future.”
Gresham House chief executive Tony Dalwood (pictured) said: “We welcome our new strategic shareholder in Gresham House and the long-term capital investment platform we are now proposing is expected to grow our third party assets under management significantly, accelerating our path to profitability.”
