Recently in Capital raising Category

The good news coming from the property funds sector has continued for another month with the Investment Management Association (IMA) today releasing net investment figures for November.

Property funds were the top selling fund sector for the second month in a row in November with £438m of net sales.

The result was significantly higher than the £377m of sales achieved in October.

Property's position at the top of the list in November is in stark contrast to January 2009, when the sector ranked 28th out of the 34 sectors covered by the IMA.

In November, property funds recorded £417m of net retail sales - the highest achieved since March 2007 when £467m of sales were made.

Last week, a further £441m was raised for corporate balance sheet repairs by two companies - Grainger and Quintain.
Grainger announced it would raise £250m by issuing up to 277.6m new shares through a two for one rights issue at 90p.
Quintain announced a three for one rights issue of 390.1m new shares, raising £191m.
In his weekly property sector note, Nomura Real Estate analyst Mike Prew said the two capital raisings take this year's total to £6.6bn, against a real estate sector capitalisation of £25bn.
"Derwent London is now the only FT-350 real estate company not to have resorted to dilutive equity financing," says Prew.
"We find it increasingly difficult to think of many other relevant real estate companies which need to, or can, tap the equity market for fresh capital with the possible exception of Minerva.
"Of the majors, Liberty International is the most likely we think to have a follow on placing, having raised £901m in two tranches in the year to date."

An interesting little point from last night's lecture on capital raising in the public and private markets, from KBC Peel Hunt's Alex Vaughan.

He says, if you've got an IPO planned, you'd better be underway by FRIDAY at the latest. Anyone not on the road speaking to potential investors by then would be better of waiting until next year.

In general his message was that the public market is willing to look at IPOs, but you need a fantastic track record, as investoprs would rather back a secondary offering from an already existing team - and this is where the most money has been raised from the stockmarket this year.