- Ruffer (RICA), the flexible investment sector fund, delivered total NAV and share price returns of 10.1% and 12.4%, respectively, over the year ending period to 30 June. The portfolio’s protective assets led returns through the downturn, with positive contributions over the last six months coming from credit protection (+6.2%), gold (+5.1%), index-linked bonds (+3.9%) and option protection (+3.3%). The equity book was down by (10.5%). In the management report, RICA note: “The world today, in lockdown, is unequivocally deflationary but the solutions are unequivocally inflationary. A significant change of the last six months is that politicians rather than central bankers now have their hands on the steering wheel and they have an entirely different set of objectives and incentives. On top of this, austerity is dead and fiscal spending is here to stay. What’s more it is currently being financed by central bank money printing. It doesn’t matter whether it is the political left or the right in power – they all have their own expensive plans to stimulate and get the economy going again. But the problem with ‘printing money’ is one of control. Once voters know that unfettered money can be bestowed so easily, politicians will suffer greater pressure to create more! As Milton Friedman said, ‘Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program’.”
- BioPharma Credit (BPCR), the life sciences debt investor, announced that it has authority to repurchase up to 206m ordinary shares of US$0.01, in accordance with its discount management programme.
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Helical has secured a £140m facility from Allianz to finance the development of the 10-storey office building 33 Charterhouse Street in Farringdon, London. The facility has a four-year term, with the option to extend to a fifth year. It is anticipated that the first drawdown will be in Q3 2020, from which point all future development costs will be fully funded by the facility, and construction is expected to complete in 2022.