GCP plots £50m placing plan

London-listed debt fund GCP Infrastructure has outlined plans to raise about £50 million ($64.4 million; €56.6 million) via a new placing.

Shares will be placed at 124 pence per ordinary share, a 2.7 percent discount on GCP’s 127.5 pence per-share closing price last week.

The firm said proceeds of the placing will be used to fund a “number of attractive investment opportunities in the near term”, although it did not expand on the types of investments it expects to make.

In its half-yearly report in May, GCP Infrastructure acknowledged the “sporadic” deal flow in the market currently, although it said it continues to find value in small-scale education assets, as well as developing an increasing presence in the supported-living sector of the social housing market. The latter was the target of the fund’s most recent deal in April, subscribing for a loan note of up to £40 million to finance supported-living units for adults with physical and learning difficulties.

That transaction came less than a week after GCP revealed its participation in Macquarie and USS’s swoop to buy the UK’s Green Investment Bank, in which the debt fund committed to buy loans with a value of up to £140 million over a two-year period.

The latest placing is GCP’s first since November when it reaped proceeds of £90 million, having originally sought to raise £60 million.