Honeycomb chairman launches defence of Pollen Street Capital

The firm, which is the investment manager of Honeycomb, has seen a tense few weeks following a takeover bid of one of its other investment mandates.

Tensions within the listed-direct lending fund world have risen of late following accusations of poor governance by Pollen Street Capital, the manager of the HoneyComb and Pollen Street Secured Lending investment trusts, by the board of the latter fund.

The chairman of the former, Robert Sharpe, meanwhile was waded in by publishing a defence of Pollen Street and the fund’s “extremely positive relationship” with the asset manager. 

“The team at Pollen Street has managed Honeycomb since the company's inception in December 2015. Throughout the whole of that period, my experience is that the team has acted at all times with absolute integrity and good governance. Pollen Street's interaction with the Board has been transparent and collaborative and they, like us, have always been focused on managing the Company in the best interests of its shareholders,” he said.

“We are very disappointed that the recent PSSL events have been presented in a way which implies that Pollen Street is in some way lacking in any of these qualities. I find some of the accusations very hard to believe, as they do not at all reflect the Honeycomb Board's relationship with or experience in dealing with Pollen Street,” he added.

Waterfall Asset Management, a US-based investor who said in December 2018 that it would  - separately - be investing $1bn in Funding Circle loans, launched a takeover bid for Pollen Street Secured Lending last week leading to a war of words between the fund's chairman and the two asset managers.