Geoff Wilson’s new listed investment company hasn’t quite reached the lofty targets that would have made it the largest LIC ever to float on the sharemarket, but it still looks like being the biggest LIC since the GFC — not a bad effort given the recent market turmoil.
The new Future Generation Global (FGG) listed investment company, which will provide shareholders with exposure to global fund managers with proceeds to be spent on young people affected by mental illness, was inundated with last-minute applications ahead of the close of its offer on Friday.
As a result the online application and payment portal remained open until 5pm yesterday.
At this stage it looks like the raising will be about $300 million, putting it ahead of Argo’s new infrastructure LIC that raised $286 million earlier this year, but well short of Wilson’s lofty goal of $550m. The final numbers should be available on Thursday.
Interestingly FGG joint chief executive and former Philanthropy Australia CEO Louise Walsh, who was only sticking around for five months before taking a new job offshore, now looks like staying with FGG for a while longer.
She apparently made the super shortlist to run a big European family office but missed out on the gig. Whisper is she is now keen for a job in New York, but will stick around to help Wilson get more brokers to allow FGG trades to be made pro bono.
FGG replicates the concept Wilson successfully introduced to Australia last year with the $200m Future Generation Investment Company.
That fund, backed by the likes of billionaires Andrew Forrest and Solomon Lew as well as the Victor Smorgon Group, David Paradice, Alex Waislitz and Neil Balnaves’s Balnaves Foundation, recently reported an after-tax profit of $11.37m in FY2015.
Its portfolio rose almost 4 per cent since inception in September 2014, outperforming the S&P/ASX All Ordinaries Accumulation Index, which increased 0.82 per cent over the same period.
This article first appeared in The Australian Business Review.