Ashmore billionaire to surrender his control
CONCERNS over the power balance at investment firm
Ashmore have flushed out one of the Square Mile’s most lowkey billionaires.
Mark Coombs said he will cash in part of his £1bn holding in Ashmore to appease worries over his ‘creeping control’ of the fund management group he founded over two decades ago.
The Cambridge- educated lawyer, a pro-Remain Tory donor, has agreed to offload around 4 percentage points from his 39pc stake a year in order to reduce his shareholding to a more appropriate level. The shares fell 3.7pc, or 15.4p, to 398p.
Ashmore, which invests in emerging markets, also updated on its financial progress: underlying profits rose 8pc to £98.8m in the six months to December 31.
The FTSE 100 enjoyed a solid rather than spectacular day as the index ended the day 6.17 points higher at 7197.01.
The big riser – up 12.3pc, or 186p, to 1703.5p – was Micro Focus. Having endured a significant bout of indigestion in the wake of the £6.8bn acquisition of Hewlett Packard’s enterprise software division two year ago, the technology group appears to be well on the road to recovery.
So much so that it has extended its share buyback programme for the second time in three months, increasing it to just under £400m. There was more bad news for
Royal Mail, whose shares have more than halved in value since a year-high of 631p last May.
Morgan Stanley downgraded its rating to ‘ equal- weight’ from ‘overweight’ after cutting its price target and earnings estimates for the postal delivery firm. The American broker is assuming the dividend payment will be lower than it had originally pencilled in, while the competitive landscape will remain tough. Shares ended down 0.3pc, or 0.9p, at 274.9p.
It was a day to forget for investors in Convatec, the FTSE 250 maker of colostomy bags.
Its shares tumbled 18.9pc, or 28.05p, to 120.2p after it said a £117m investment programme is expected to crimp profits for the next three years. Things were much worse for
Motif Bio, one of the smaller constituents of the healthcare sector.
The shares fell 73pc, or 29.18p, to 10.82p after it revealed the US Food & Drug Administration had failed to approve skin infection treatment, Iclaprim. This wasn’t a straight ‘no’ , as the agency wants more data on the drug. So there may still be some hope.
The news had a significant knock- on impact on Amphion
Innovations, down 77pc, or 1.43p, to 0.42p, which is sitting on an 8.5pc stake in Motif that has crumbled in value.
The resignation of the boss of technology group Tungsten received an altogether different response. The stock jumped 27.3pc, or 6p, to 28p as it said it is looking for a replacement for departing Richard Hurwitz.
Former star stock Wandisco was back in the limelight. Shares in the software group shot up 38pc, or 190p to 690p, after it received advanced technology partner status with Amazon Web Services. It also revealed investors had subscribed for £14m-worth of shares.
Netscientific rose 88.2pc, or 3.75p, to 8p after a portfolio company received the first tranche of investment from a Chinese backer.
Accesso Technology, which has endured a difficult week since announcing the departure of its long-serving chairman Tom Burnet, found some love as buyers emerged for the shares which rose 9.7pc, or 80p, to 900p.