Daniel Godfrey seeks £125m for The People's Trust

The People's Trust plans to list on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Social Stock Exchange with the ticker PPLS on 17 October 2017. It will target a 7 per cent total return over seven years, assuming inflation averages 2 per cent. Its net asset value (NAV) at the outset is expected to be 98.5p with an estimated dividend yield of 1.8 per cent. It will have a multi-manager structure whereby external managers run its portfolio. They have been selected for their sustainable attitude to investment and given a seven-year period to prove themselves rather than the usual three. 

The trust's board chose the managers with their investment adviser Willis Towers Watson, which has also been employed by Alliance Trust (ATST) to select its underlying managers and which Witan Investment Trust (WTAN) has used to help with research. The People's Trust is expected to have an ongoing charge of 1.07 per cent which is higher than those of multi-manager funds such as Witan and Alliance Trust which have respective ongoing charges of 0.79 and 0.54 per cent.

Alongside these external managers the trust will also initially allocate 1 per cent of its assets to a social impact fund run by Big Issue Invest Fund Management. This will mainly be in loans to social enterprises and charities tackling poverty in the UK. The allocation to this area could rise to 5 per cent and extend beyond the UK.

More than £1.5m of the trust's targeted raising will come from its board. And its non-executive directors have agreed to waive their fees, while chief executive officer Mr Godfrey will waive half his salary for either two years or until the trust amasses net assets of £250m.

Investors keen to take a stake in The People's Trust have until 10 October to apply, at a price of 100p a share. But the 2,400 crowd founders helped to cover the trust's set-up costs by raising £115,000 will be able to buy shares for 99.5p each.

Investors applying for The People's Trust shares via broker Hargreaves Lansdown, meanwhile, will receive an extra 0.5 per cent of shares rounded down to the nearest whole share. Hargreaves Lansdown has a £10m guaranteed allocation to The People's Trust shares, which means that even if the launch proves popular and applications are scaled back, this broker will receive all the shares its clients apply for up to this guaranteed amount.

Eighteen other brokers have been named as intermediaries for The People's Trust launch including AJ Bell, Interactive Investor and IG.

Mr Godfrey also plans to develop an individual savings account (Isa) savings platform in 2018 as a low-cost shareholder service to provide a way for those with little money to invest in the trust.

Brokers offering The People's Trust launch

Source: The People's Trust