Viking provides £4m lift for SMEs in region

​Viking Fund Managers, which provides funding for SMEs in Yorkshire and Humber, reported strong trading following the first exit for the £43m Finance Yorkshire Equity Fund.
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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.

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Viking’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.

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“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.

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Braveheart 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.

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Braveheart’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.”