ICG float will raise pounds 10m for founders

THE FOUR directors who founded the buyout lender Intermediate Capital Group five years ago will share pounds 10m when their company floats later this month.

ICG, which provides a mixture of debt and equity finance to growing companies in the UK and the Continent, revealed in its pathfinder prospectus yesterday that its assets included pounds 34m of securities carried on its books at their cost price of just over pounds 500,000.

The float will value ICG at more than pounds 100m. It will involve the issue of new shares and the sale of a proportion by existing shareholders. Some pounds 18m from the float will be used to pay off existing preference shares, and pounds 10m of new money will be pumped into the company. The shares will be placed with institutions and offered through intermediaries, depending on demand.

James Odgers, one of the four founding managing directors, said ICG had started the new year well and was set to complete a bigger value of deals in the first six months than in the whole of 1993.

He said ICG had a fundamentally conservative balance sheet, which included pounds 6.64m worth of shares listed at cost of pounds 64,000. Another pounds 27m worth of unquoted shares and warrants are listed at pounds 480,000.

The nine institutions which own most of ICG will keep well over half their holdings, says Mr Odgers.

They are Banque Paribas, Charterhouse Development, Foreign & Colonial Ventures, James Capel, Prudential Venture Managers, Shearson Lehman Hutton, Edinburgh Investment Trust, Industrial Bank of Japan and Postel.

Particulars will be issued on 19 May, latest time for reciept of applications from intermediaries is 26 May and dealings start on 1 June.

Lazard Brothers is sponsor to the issue and Cazenove and James Capel are acting as brokers.