Octopus Asset Management, the operator of four venture capital trusts – namely, Eclipse 1 and 2, BioScience and Phoenix VCT – has revealed it is seeking to raise up to £60 million through a new twin investment vehicle.
 
Eclipse 3 and Eclipse 4 will be launched at the same time and will make identical investments. The Octopus team claim this will enable them to put up to £2 million into portfolio companies. In turn, this should allow the trusts to ‘invest in larger, more developed [and therefore lower-risk] companies’. An additional benefit for investors should be an anticipated reduction in costs, with annual running expenses capped at 2.9 per cent of net assets.
 
Due to the proposed focus on later-stage investments, trust chairman Gregory Melgaard predicts that Eclipse 3 & 4 will be able to ‘sell some of its investments more quickly than VCTs that focus on earlier-stage companies’.