Viking provides £4m lift for SMEs in region
Over the first three months of 2014, Viking invested over £4m in 12 companies and this level of investment is expected to be maintained over the coming months.
The portfolio includes 38 live investments and Viking said these include some good businesses which should do well for the region and provide significant returns for shareholders.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdViking’s parent company Braveheart Investment Group said Andrew Burton’s team in the Yorkshire and Humber region had a good year.
The team oversaw the fund’s first exit following the sale of Rotherham-based S3 ID to Singapore-listed CSE Global.
S3 ID was the first investment made by the fund and the sale made a return of £3.4m from an original investment of £1.6m, generating a money multiple of 2.2.
Mr Burton, managing director of Viking Fund Managers, said the first exit following the sale of S3 ID was a landmark deal.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide Ad“Part of our work is to ensure that companies can grow and no longer need us. It’s a natural progression for companies to move on,” he said.
“S3 ID were in the oil and gas sector and that requires project finance. The natural place for it to sit was in a big oil and gas company which is where it is now.”
He added that some of the group’s Yorkshire investments are growing very well but declined to say which ones.
“The economy has picked up and several of our companies are seeing the growth they hoped for two years ago. It’s finally happening which is encouraging. We try to get companies stable before we extricate ourselves,” he said.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdBraveheart said it saw a good performance at its fund management business in the year to the end of March.
The group said that after a disappointing first half, due mostly to the disposal of its loss-making corporate finance business Envestors which was sold to a management buyout team in December, it returned to profitability in the second half.
The group said the business is now less volatile and the current year’s trading is more consistent with what it saw in the second half of last year.
Excluding unrealised portfolio movements, the profit before tax for continuing operations was £1,000, up from a loss of £120,000 last year.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdBraveheart’s chief executive Geoffrey Thomson, who operates funds in Scotland, Yorkshire and Northern Ireland, said a ‘yes’ vote for Scottish independence would be “catastrophic” for the financial services industry in Scot- land.
“If there is a yes vote, a lot of financial services companies would have to move.
“The oil revenues are nowhere near what the SNP says they are,” he said.
“While some people would like to be independent, it would be crazy to go there. I’m strongly against a ‘yes’ vote.”