Intermediary offers have been hold for a pair of UK-listed investment trusts.

A raft of institutions have been lined to up to distribute shares for two London-listed trusts that are holding intermediary offers to widen access.

The offers were launched last week for Aurora Investment Trust and BB Healthcare Trust. The intermediaries include AJ Bell Securities; Cornhill Capital; Selftrade; iDealing.com; Interactive Investor Trading; Redmayne-Bentley; Walker Crips Stockbrokers and WH Ireland.

The process is designed to make the funds more accessible to retail investors via wealth managers and platforms and widen the investor base.

Aurora Investment Trust is recovering from a period of poor returns (2010 to 2015).  In January 2016 the management changed to Phoenix Asset Management and the performance has improved, with returns since that time of 25 per cent.  It invests in UK equities and has large stakes in Lloyds, Barrett, Sports Direct and Easyjet. In the case of this fund, the offer is designed to grow the size of the fund and reduce fixed costs per share. Prior to the share issue, AuM stood at £73 million ($96.5 million).

BB Healthcare Trust, meanwhile, was launched in December 2016 in an IPO that raised £150 million. It has so far returned 17 per cent in nine months and has paid a dividend of 1.75 pence. The trust has grown to £224m market cap. Bellevue Asset Management runs the assets and has a track record with its sister fund (BB Biotech fund) of 15 per cent annualised returns since launch in 1993.