GLIF has sold two CLO investments to Fair Oaks Income Fund (FOIF) for the value of $54,723,772 – $20.4 million in cash and an issue of 34,298,425 shares in FOIF at the Issue Price of $1.00. The money raised from the sale will be deployed into GLIF’s underlying SME finance assets – ten alternative finance platforms that will form the core of the company’s future business. AltFi Director David Stevenson caught up with GLIF CEO Geoff Miller back in February – who offered his take on each of the platforms in the GLIF arsenal. Going forward, GLIF will continue to focus on smaller companies’ finance assets – assets capable of generating a target return of 10-15%.
Miller commented on the news:
“We are pleased to conclude the successful disposal of these investments and look forward to achieving further progress during the rest of 2014.”
"We will be utilising the cash proceeds primarily to acquire loan assets originated through our family of platforms, with part of the proceeds going towards further equity investments in both existing platforms and potentially the equity of further platforms."
Miller's words are a promising sign both for small businesses and for the platforms looking to finance them. The $20 million – coupled with the £200 million recently raised by P2P Global Investments – represent the first droplets in what could soon become a downpour of institutional money over the alternative finance sector.
Below is the complete list of GLIF’s alternative finance investments:
BMS Finance
FundingKnight
Platform Black
TradeRiver Finance
Raiseworks
Dansk Faktura Børs
Finpoint UK
Sancus
Proplend
CrowdShed
