By Elliot Gulliver-Needham
The embattled Asian Energy Impact trust that relisted on the London Stock Exchange, has seen its stock price crash from $1.05 to just $0.30 upon opening.
The trust began trading on the London Stock Exchange from 3:30pm yesterday after the trust published its delayed annual and interim results in January.
The trust’s shares were suspended almost a year ago after an issue was identified with its 2022 annual results, leading to ‘material uncertainty’ over the fair value of some of its assets and liabilities.
Price rises in one of the trust’s solar plant construction costs meant that the project it had originally invested in had been incorrectly valued, and the trust eventually pulled out of the investment and wrote it off.
Following the suspension incident, the investment manager ThomasLloyd Group and the board began a public spat over whether the trust should be wound up, with the board accusing the manager of withholding “highly material” information from it about the solar project.
“Whilst the board continues to investigate these matters urgently, it appears that key information was withheld from it, and misleading information given to it, over a protracted period of time,” the board said publicly in August.
Eventually, the board gained the support of shareholders, while ThomasLloyd Group was ousted as investment manager and replaced by Octopus Energy Generation, with the trust’s name changed from ThomasLloyd Energy Impact to its current name.
On Tuesday, the energy trust’s board said that the strategic review of its future was “at an advanced stage,” and will announce the outcome of the review early next month.
It previously said that the most likely outcomes were either the relaunch of the trust, potentially with a new investment objective and manager while maintaining an impact-led Asian focus, or a managed wind-down.
As of the end of last year, the trust said it had a cash balance of $41.2m (£32.3m).
