NORTHERN VENTURE TRUST PLC (NVT)

NORTHERN VENTURE TRUST PLC (NVT)

Seminars

ShareSoc Growth Company Seminar, Altrincham, February 2017

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Blog posts

Northern Venture Trust and Other VCTs

The views expressed in this article are those of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. Northern Venture Trust (NVT) recently published their Annual Report. It shows that the manager (now Mercia) collected a performance fee of £2.5 million which on my calculation raised the overall fees and expenses as a percentage of closing net asset value to 4.5%. This is way too high in my opinion even allowing for the work involved in managing a portfolio of small, unlisted investments. When ...

End of year musings – VCTs

Should I continue to invest in VCTs, I ask myself. Hold, Buy or Sell? I was steered into these investments by my financial adviser, when I was busy working...

Northern VCTs and Mercia

The 3 Northern VCTs (Northern Venture Trust, Northern 2 VCT and Northern 3 VCT) are proposing to novate their management agreements with NVM Private Equity LLP in favour of...

Profit Warnings at XP Power and Ted Baker, plus Mercia Placing

A number of profit warnings this morning. The most interesting to me was at XP Power (XPP) although I do not hold it. It was interesting because as a...

What Were the Real Returns from VCTs over 24 Years?

I wrote a previous blog article on the merits of Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) but I thought it worthwhile to actually do some analysis of the capital and dividend...

Big Audit Firm Break-Up and Northern VCT AGM

A report commissioned by the Labour Party has advocated the break-up of the big four audit firms that dominate the audits of FTSE-350 firms. The report, co-authored by Prof. Prem Sikka et al, even goes so far as to suggest that their share of that market should be limited to 50% and that joint audits be promoted. In addition it argues that audit firms should be banned from doing non-audit work for the same company, and an independent body to appoint audit ...

New VCT Rules and Knowledge Intensive Businesses

I attended the Annual General Meeting of Northern Venture Trust (NVT) yesterday - one of the more successful VCTs. Management representative Tim Levett gave us a briefing on the impact of the new "draconian rules" (as he called them) for VCTs arising from EU regulations. His criticism also arose from the fact that the legislation is effectively retrospective as it impacts both "old money" from past fund raisings and new money. One particular oddity is that the amount of money than can ...

Why should investors not see performance fee details at Northern VCT?

Northern Venture Trust (a VCT) introduced a management performance fee at a General Meeting on the 18th July. They did not have one before even though they had outperformed the very similar Northern 2 VCT over the last ten years who do. I spoke against the introduction of such a fee at the General Meeting, and raised questions about how the fees were to be calculated, as did another shareholder. The calculations were not at all clear from the meeting notice. As ...

AGM Reports

Northern Venture Trust AGM Report 2022

I attended the Northern Venture Trust (NVT) AGM this morning (6th January) via Zoom. This trust gave a good performance last year and the AGM was well organised in some ways with shareholders both attending physically and via Zoom (i.e. it was a hybrid meeting but all votes had to be submitted in advance). Tim Levett representing the fund manager gave a presentation on the historic results and covered one or two other points. He specifically mentioned the “sunset clause” on dividend ...

Northern Venture Managers Investor Seminar (NVT) 2018

I attended the annual Northern Venture Managers Investor Seminar at the British Museum on 28th February. Before the meeting started I mingled with the guests and bumped into Simon Constantine, Chairman of Northern Venture Trust PLC. He clearly knew of ShareSoc and had corresponded with us in the past. He mentioned that the VCT industry’s investment managers including NVM had recently formed a lobbying association which was actively engaged with Govt on the matter of tax incentivised investments. The group had been ...

Northern Venture Trust Plc (NVT) AGM 2016

On Thursday 15th December I attended the annual general meeting of Northern Venture Trust Plc at the British Library in central London. The meeting was well attended with 50 or so shareholders present, a very good turnout for a VCT of this size. The chairman Simon Constantine opened the meeting by introducing the other board members and Tim Levett from the fund manager, with Simon then going on to thank the shareholders who had turned up. We then moved straight to a presentation ...

Northern Venture Trust (NVT) AGM Report 2015

I attended the Annual General Meeting of Northern Venture Trust (NVT) today. This is of course a Venture Capital Trust (VCT) which was one of the first VCTs to launch back in 1995, when I bought a few shares. Yes I have been holding this company for 20 years, and have bought more over the years because it is one of the more successful VCTs. According to the AIC, the NAV Total Return over ten years is exactly 300 (i.e. £100 pound ...

Northern Venture Trust (NVT) AGM Report 2013

Northern Venture Trust is one of the historically best performing Venture Capital Trusts - with a Total Return (capital growth plus dividends) of 5.60% per annum compound since it was formed in 1995 according to Allenbridge. On top of that shareholders will have got major tax reliefs when investing and of course the dividends are tax free also. I originally invested back in 1995 so know the history of the company well, and performance has actually been improving in recent years. The ...

Northern Venture Trust (NVT) General Meeting

On the 18th July, Northern Venture Trust (a VCT, epic NVT) held a General Meeting to approve four resolutions. The first three were in connection with a new share offer and were not contentious. The last was to approve a change to the Management Agreement. ShareSoc had previously advised shareholders to vote against that resolution – see www.sharesoc.org/pr48northernventure.html for the press release we issued. The key points made in there were: 1. The addition of a performance incentive fee will simply increase ...

Northern Venture Trust (NVT) AGM Report 2011

Northern Venture Trust is one of the few Venture Capital Trusts without “VCT” in its name. It’s also one of the few that has been producing very good returns for shareholders and where, as a result, there is a sufficient demand in the “secondary” market for the shares that the company does not have to resort to continual buy-backs to manage the discount to NAV. Indeed they did no buy-backs in the last year. I attended their AGM at the IOD in ...

ShareSoc News

Shareholders advised to vote against new performance fee at Northern Venture Trust

PRESS RELEASE 48 (26/06/2013) Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) are one of the stock market oddities but are beloved by many private investors because of the tax reliefs available to investors. Northern Venture Trust was one of the first to be launched back in 1995. It was issued without a fund management performance fee in place but they are now proposing to introduce one. ShareSoc advises shareholders in this company to vote against the resolution to approve the change in the management fee at ...