Invesco sells £9.6m Ranger Direct Lending fund stake

The closed-ended fund has had a turbulent time in recent months.

Invesco Perpetual, the asset management giant, has been trimming its exposure to the £243m Ranger Direct Lending fund amid a testing period for the alternative credit investment trust.

The firm is one of Ranger’s largest investors with, until this week, just under a third of total shares in the fund.  This, however, has been trimmed in the past seven days, according to regulatory documents, with Invesco Perpetual’s current holding now down at 27.9 per cent.

Invesco Perpetual, who owns the fund as an income play within their fleet of top equity income portfolios, sold £9.6m worth of Ranger’s stock last week.

Ranger Direct Lending invests across the private debt landscape although avoids pure P2P exposure instead opting for instruments from multiple direct lending platforms within a diverse group of asset classes, including real estate loans, SME loans. 

In 2017 the fund has been hurt by a problem related to its largest holding. In the closing weeks of 2016 it was revealed that a direct lending platform in the US called Argon Credit was collapsing. The Ranger Direct Lending portfolio, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, had $28m of indirect exposure to Argon through the Princeton Alternative Income fund (who lent money to the platform).

This has meant a bumpy ride for investors in 2017 after a stellar run in 2016 where the portfolio outperformed nearly all its rivals as well as the broader marketplace, as shown in the graph below.