VCT News
Noble Health Fund Moves to Beringea
19 January 2009 - London - Beringea is pleased to announce that it will be taking over the management of the Noble Health Fund from Noble Fund Managers Limited from 1 February 2009.
Investment director, Dr Stéphane Méry will also move to Beringea and will continue to be involved in the management of the VCT. Dr Louis Nisbet will continue to represent the VCT on the boards of a number of investee companies.
Stéphane has been Associate Director of Healthcare Investment at Noble since May 2007 and Fund Manager of the Bloomsbury Bioseed Fund since November 2000. Prior to joining Noble he was Associate Director at SmithKline Beecham and also worked at the American consulting firm, ZS Associates, specialising on sales and marketing issues within the pharmaceutical industry. In addition he has been involved in the start-up of a strategic consulting company specialising in R&D and marketing strategy for the biotech and healthcare industry, Double Helix Development.
Beringea is an established VCT manager, having managed ProVen VCT and ProVen Growth & Income VCT since they were launched in 2000 and 2001 respectively. The initial ordinary share issues of these VCTs are the second and fifth best performing respectively of more than 100 initial VCT share issues with a track record of over two years.* It is anticipated that there will be opportunities for the Health Fund VCT to co-invest with the existing ProVen VCTs, allowing it to invest in larger, more established companies than is possible at present.
Beringea Group also has experience of healthcare venture capital investing, having managed a healthcare venture capital fund in the USA for nine years. Beringea won the 2008 VCT Fund Manager of the Year Award at the Growth Company Awards and its investment management team has more than 60 years combined experience of making and managing venture capital investments.
It is part of the agreement between Noble and Beringea that the Board will propose a name change to shareholders to reflect the new management. This is anticipated to be announced on 1 February 2009.
* Source: www.taxefficientreview.com, VCT performance page as at 15 December 2008, based on annual rate of return since launch.
About Beringea
Beringea is an international venture capital firm with offices in London and Detroit. In the UK Beringea manages ProVen VCT, ProVen Health VCT, ProVen Growth & Income VCT and Global Rights Fund II. Beringea launched its first VCT in 1996, making it one of the most experienced VCT managers in the UK. ProVen Growth & Income and ProVen VCT are highest performing VCTs of their launch years, respectively, according to www.taxefficientreview.com. For more information please visit www.provenvcts.co.uk.