However Michael Hart chief executive of Sun Life and Provincial said yesterday that he did
Posted in General on 20. Jul, 2010
However, Michael Hart, chief executive of Sun Life and Provincial, said yesterday that he did not see the partial flotation as one for investors to draw large instant profits from.”I hope this is not a stagging issue,” Mr Hart said. Shares in Sun Life, the UK life insurer with more than pounds 19bn of funds under management, are to be sold to both private and institutional investors, netting its French owner, Compagnie UAP, about pounds 500m. The partial sale of Sun Life and Provincial Holdings, which also includes UAP Provincial, a general insurance subsidiary; and New Ireland, a life and pensions provider in the Republic of Ireland, will take place next month.
Analysts yesterday valued the combined company at about pounds 1.3bn, suggesting that UAP may retain about 55 per cent of the firm under its direct control. The deadline for retail offers will be 10 June, with the allocation of shares taking place 11 days later.Private investors will be able to bid for shares in the combined holding, with a minimum investment of pounds 1,000. Retail unit trust sales rose to pounds 1.1bn, about pounds 100m above last month’s total, while net sales of PEPs touched pounds 1.08bn, the highest total ever. The number of accounts also reached record levels, rising by 250,000 to 7 million.
The increase in sales came despite the start of a new tax year, traditionally seen as marking an end to the ritual tax-planning investment frenzy in the run-up to the 5 April deadline.However, the figures from the Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds (Autif) also showed that net sales to institutions, at pounds 19m, picked up only slightly last month compared with an outflow of pounds 64m in March.Despite gross sales of pounds 800m, institutional sell-offs, including pounds 194m from the Far East sector, excluding Japan, brought net sales down.Autif said the decline suggested that although individual savers were warming to unit trusts and PEPs after a sales fall in 1995, big institutions may be more in tune with where the UK and world’s stock markets are headed in the coming year.The trade body added that savers’ money was pouring into unit trusts as an alternative to lower-yielding building society investments..
Sales of unit trusts and personal equity plans reached record levels in April, according to new figures from the industry’s trade body yesterday. The company will become the first publicly quoted train operator since the railways were nationalised in 1947. The placing, which will raise pounds 8m at 100p, was oversubscribed.A good stock market reception is also planned for Recognition, a “neural computing” group, which is expected to go to as much as a 20p premium on the 70p placing price when dealings in the shares begin today The placing values the group at pounds 19m.. It claims a 14 per cent share of a market dominated by Twinings.Meanwhile, dealings begin this week in three issues with high hopes for strong debuts. Independent Energy, which sells electricity direct to business users, will be valued at pounds 13.1m when it joins AIM on Friday.Broker Peel Hunt is placing 3.23 million shares at 100p each, a quarter of the enlarged equity to raise money to expand Independent’s sales and marketing effort and to switch existing gas reserves into electricity by developing power generating plants.Prism Rail, which has gained a 15-year franchise to run the London, Tilbury & Southend railway service, dubbed the “Misery Line”, is expected to open at a large premium when its shares start trading on AIM today.
It now has shops stretching from Exeter to Edinburgh, as well as in France, Poland, Taiwan and Japan. The company’s float will value it at about pounds 20m and raise a further pounds 3m for expansion.Will Hobhouse, the managing director, who owns a third of the shares, said the group wanted to double its 79-strong shop network over the next five years while continuing its growth overseas.Founded in 1886, Whittards only had three London stores until it began a rapid roll-out in the late 1980s. That in turn has changed the patient from a passive user of a service to a buyer.Whitecross has grown from one to six practices, all in London, with a total of 28 treatment rooms. All are located in shop-front premises on the high street, reflecting the new emphasis on retailing disciplines. Nine more sites are planned over the next five years.The company made a pre-tax loss of pounds 264,000 in the year to December 1995 and financial projections forecast further losses this year and next but profits thereafter. Dealings in the shares begin on Thursday.Whittards, the tea and coffee retailer, also announced plans to join AIM yesterday and said it had ambitions to become “a category killer in quality tea and coffee, mugs and teapots”.