Nicola Horlick Launches Glentham Capital

British fund manager Nicola Horlick has launched a campaign on equity crowdfunding site Seedrs to raise seed capital for her new venture, Glentham Capital. She is seeking 150,000 pounds ($229,960) investment, and is offering investors 10 percent of the equity of the business. Horlick serves as chairman of the company, and Pandora Edmiston, who worked in the film industry and then moved to Citibank for a number of years, is its CEO.

PRESS RELEASE

Nicola Horlick, one of Britain’s most successful and well-regarded fund managers, has today launched a campaign on equity crowdfunding site Seedrs to raise seed capital for her new venture, Glentham Capital. She is seeking £150,000 investment, and she is offering investors 10% of the equity of the business.
Glentham Capital is a startup fund management company. It will look to raise a $100 million listed Guernsey fund from UK and overseas investors starting in the final quarter of 2013. Once raised, the fund will provide finance for Hollywood films. Horlick serves as Chairman of the company, and Pandora Edmiston, who worked in the film industry and then moved to Citibank for a number of years, is its CEO.
The money raised through Seedrs will be used to pay Edmiston’s first-year salary, the set-up costs of the fund and some travel costs. Thereafter the company plans to operate profitably through a 2% management fee and a 20% performance fee charged on the new fund. There are plans to launch other specialist funds in the future.
By launching this campaign, Horlick is inviting investors large and small to own a piece of the new company. All UK-resident adults are eligible to invest (provided they pass a quiz showing that they understand the risks of early-stage investing), and the minimum investment amount is £10.
Investments will be made directly through the Seedrs online platform, and after completion Seedrs will hold and administer the shares as the investors’ nominee. Investors will be able to claim Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) tax relief of up to 78% on their investments.
The campaign video for Glentham Capital can be seen athttp://bit.ly/16ehvQr.
This campaign represents a milestone in the history of finance, as it is the first time that the “crowds” have been given the opportunity to participate in a fund management venture like this. Traditionally a business like Glentham Capital would have raised its seed capital from a handful of small, wealthy investors, and it could well have chosen to do so in this case. But Horlick feels that opening up the previously-closed world of fund management so that a wide range of investors can participate is good for business, good for investors and good for the market.
Horlick chose Seedrs to handle the campaign because she recognises that Seedrs is the most professional and respected equity crowdfunding platform in the market. She particularly values Seedrs’s nominee structure, which will allow Glentham Capital to reap all the benefits of having a wide base of investors while only facing one legal shareholder for administrative purposes.
The nominee structure also allows Glentham Capital to provide its investors important investor protections through a subscription agreement; in the absence of a nominee arrangement, such an agreement would not be feasible, and investors would go largely unprotected.
Seedrs is one of the world’s leading equity crowdfunding platforms. It was set up with the goal of opening early-stage investing to a wider audience by simplifying the investment process and reducing minimum investment amounts so that anyone who understands the risks involved can build a portfolio of startup investments. In the year since it launched, it has funded 28 new ventures, and it has over 12,000 registered investors on its books. Seedrs is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
CEO and Co-Founder of Seedrs, Jeff Lynn, said, “We are thrilled that Nicola Horlick has chosen Seedrs to raise seed finance for her new venture, Glentham Capital. Nicola is a truly remarkable individual, and her career has been defined by success after success. Giving ordinary investors the chance to participate in what we all hope will be her next big win is a wonderful opportunity, and it reflects her desire to open the world of fund management and early-stage investing to the wide array of men and women who want exposure to asset classes that were previously reserved for the very rich.”
Chairman of Glentham Capital, Nicola Horlick, said, “I am very pleased to be working with Seedrs to finance my new venture, Glentham Capital. Having been a fund manager for the past 30 years, I know what a great opportunity it can be to invest in a fund management company. In the old days, there was no way that I could have opened an opportunity like this to the crowds, but Seedrs provides me with the perfect opportunity to do so. Moreover, with Seedrs’s highly professional approach and crucial nominee service, I know that I will have the structure I need to grow my business while my investors have important protections. I look forward to welcoming a wide range of investors, large and small, to become part of the Glentham Capital journey.”
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For further information or comment, please contact:
Jeff Lynn on +44 (0)20 7033 8671 or jeff.lynn@seedrs.com
Nicola Horlick on +44 (0)20 7015 2150 or nhorlick@rockpool.uk.com
Notes for Editors
About Seedrs
Seedrs is a fully regulated online platform for discovering and investing in startups. It is one of the leading equity crowdfunding platforms in the world.
Seedrs provides a straightforward, transparent process for entrepreneurs to raise seed capital for their businesses from friends, family and independent investors, and for individuals to invest in the shares of startups they choose from those listed on the site.
Unlike other equity crowdfunding platforms, Seedrs enters into a subscription agreement with every investee company, and it holds and administers the shares of that company as nominee for the underlying investors. This structure provides critical protections both for the investors and for the startups:
· For investors, the subscription agreement provides essential rights, including ones to prevent investors from being unfairly diluted, to ensure that they will be able to sell their shares in a change-of-control transaction, and to require that the company provides them with ongoing information and the forms needed to claim tax reliefs. Any venture capitalist or angel investor who invests in a private company requires ta subscription agreement (sometimes called a “shareholders agreement”) like this, but most equity crowdfunding platforms do not do so and therefore leave investors unprotected.

· For startups, the nominee structure ensures that the company only needs to deal with one legal shareholder for administrative purposes. This is essential when raising follow-on funding: many later-stage investors will not invest in a startup that has hundreds of individual shareholders, but with one nominee acting on their behalf as the sole shareholder, raising additional investment is straightforward. Most equity crowdfunding platforms do not provide a nominee structure, meaning that the companies they fund will struggle to raise additional capital.
Seedrs’s fees are simple, clear and fair. There are only two charges. The first is a fee of 7.5% of any amount that is actually raised by the entrepreneur through the platform, which is paid by deducting this fee from the amount raised before the balance is transferred to the company. There is no ‘pay to pitch’, and if the startup doesn’t succeed in raising the money it is looking for, then everyone walks away and no fees are paid by anyone.
The second charge is a 7.5% fee levied on any returns that investors receive beyond their original investment, whether through the proceeds of a sale, dividends or other payments from the startup to the investors. Any returns paid to the investor up to the amount of his or her original investment are free of any charge.
Whether entrepreneur or investor, anyone in the UK can learn more about and sign up to Seedrs by visiting www.seedrs.com. Entrepreneurs and investors must be at least 18 years of age.
Seedrs is currently only open to UK investors and entrepreneurs but aims to expand internationally in the very near future.
Seedrs Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (formerly the Financial Services Authority).
About Nicola Horlick
Nicola Horlick is one of Britain’s most successful and well-regarded fund managers.
She began her career at SG Warburg & Co, becoming the youngest director ever at the age of 28.
She was later employed by Morgan Grenfell to turn around the UK fund management business. When she joined the bank, funds under management had fallen from £10 billion to £4 billion over the previous three years. She reversed that trend, and in the following five years funds under management rose from £4 billion to £22.5 billion.
She was then engaged by a French bank and set up SG Asset Management, with a target of raising £5 billion in five years. The target was reached after only two years.
In 2004, Nicola set up Bramdean Asset Management with Sir Derek Higgs. After the untimely death of Sir Derek in 2008, she sold the business to Aberdeen Asset Management in 2009.
She current chairs Rockpool Investments, which facilitates investments in profitable private companies based in the UK. Rockpool was launched in March 2012, and over the last 16 months, it has built a base of over 250 individual investors and has raised £20 million for companies.
About Glentham Capital
Glentham Capital is a startup fund management company. It will look to raise a $100 million listed Guernsey fund from overseas investors in the final quarter of 2013. Once raised, the fund will provide finance for Hollywood films. Nicola Horlick serves as Chairman of the company, and Pandora Edmiston, who worked in the film industry and then moved to Citibank for a number of years, is its CEO.
The company plans to make money through a 2% management fee and a 20% performance fee.
Glentham Capital was established based on the view that there is a serious shortage of capital for independent films in Hollywood. The studios have pulled back from making smaller films, and it is now the case that 80% of films are made by independents, with the studios concentrating on the ‘tent pole’ productions like SUPERMAN and SPIDERMAN.
Independent films are primarily financed through government subsidies, which vary from country to country (the UK government has a tax credit which allows producers to recoup 20% of what is spent here for example), and pre-sales to foreign distributors.
However, the company believes is also a need for some equity to be invested in the film and some form of debt, which can be senior debt secured on the unsold territories, mezzanine debt or gap finance. There is also a need for bridge finance to get films into production.
The new fund will provide all of these types of finance.