Neil Woodford has raised the £500m upper limit of his fundraising for the Patient Capital investment trust to £800m based on a wave of demand.
The manager had hoped to raise at least £200m for the trust, with scope to take the share issuance to £500m should demand have been high.
But now the group says based on investor interest, it “may” exceed that figure and so has ramped it up further.
Chief executive Craig Newman said the company wanted to “avoid scaling back investors’ applications, which would likely occur if the final interest is greater than £500m”.
“This is why the trust’s board, chaired by Susan Searle, has decided to publish a supplementary prospectus, increasing the share capital it can issue and bringing the maximum amount that can be raised to £800m,” Mr Newman said.
“We feel this is in everyone’s interests to do so – the scale of the upsizing is in keeping with the trust’s investment strategy and will not impact its objective or portfolio construction, as outlined in the prospectus at the time the offer was launched.”
The trust is set to focus on early-stage businesses as well as some unquoted stocks.
Mr Newman added the investment team was “very comfortable” it could deploy such levels of capital in the time frame set out at launch.
“We have an attractive pipeline of investments in the wings for Woodford Patient Capital Trust and we are relishing the greater flexibility that this level of interest affords – giving us the opportunity to work closely with early-stage businesses and helping more of them achieve commercial success,” Mr Newman said.
The trust’s shares will be admitted to the London Stock Exchange on April 21.
