BP Marsh & Partners Plc, a niche venture capital provider to early stage financial services businesses is to start trading on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BPM.
The start of trading follows the placing of a total of 9.3m shares at £1.40 per share, raising gross proceeds of £11m for the company.
There will be a total of 29.3m shares in issue on admission, resulting in an initial market-capitalisation of just over £41m.
Brian Marsh, chairman, said: “We are delighted to be admitted to AIM. We intend to use the proceeds from this placement to continue to grow, by financing existing investments as well as funding new opportunities."
During the last 16 years, BP Marsh's management team, led by chairman Brian Marsh OBE, has invested in 25 companies, typically in amounts of up to £2.5m through flexible investment structures involving equity and often debt.
The company said its successfully realised investments have been sold at a substantial profit, returning in aggregate over 3 times the initial investment, with two investments returning over 37 times.
At July 31, 2005, the audited net asset value of the company was £28.9m. This represented an increase in net asset value of £26.3m over the original capital investment in 1990 of £2.5m.
