The £98.5m Merian Chrysalis investment trust, managed by Richard Watts and Nick Williamson, is seeking to raise £50m in new capital from investors.
Mr Watts also runs the Merian UK Mid Cap fund, while Mr Williamson is a specialist UK small cap investor.
The Chrysalis trust, which was launched last year, invests in a small number of unquoted companies.
In an announcement this morning, the board of Merian Chyrsalis announced it was seeking to raise at least £50m, though the final amount raised was at the board's discretion and it said the placing of new shares would be closed if it exceeded £75m.
The announcement revealed the fund managers had a pipeline of eight companies with whom they were in discussions about investing, spanning sectors such as fintech, ecommerce and software-as-a-service.
Merian Chrysalis was the first investment trust launched by Merian Global Investors, formerly Old Mutual Global Investors, when it launched in November 2018.
The trust raised £100m at launch, less than the £200m it had originally targeted, and its aim is to have between seven and 15 investments in early stage unquoted companies.
The capital raised by the trust at launch is 85 per cent invested to date.
The largest investments include Starling, a challenger bank, and Graphcore, an artificial intelligence company.
Merian does not have any current plans to launch more investment trusts.
david.thorpe@ft.com
