Baker Steel Capital Management is to rename and list its Genus Capital natural resources fund in London next month.
The $850m asset manager is aiming to raise £70m, on top of the $61m already in Genus Capital, which it is renaming the Baker Steel Resources Trust.
The trust will invest in pre-IPO mining stocks and specialist resources companies.
Trevor Steel, lead manager of the Baker Steel fund, says the product is a stock-specific, bottom-up fund which "provides a great opportunity for investors who want to access quality resources companies at an early stage."
Launched in unlisted format in July 2008 by Baker Steel, AWR Lloyd and Rock Capital Partners, the fund aims to realise between $116m and $225m on its existing investments. It also aims to make 25% to 35% annually.
The managers have $3.4m of their own money at stake in the fund.
Steel says the fund should benefit from a "long-term secular bull market in commodities".
It will make investments in companies at early and late stages of their financing, and exit through a mixture of IPOs and trade sales.
Baker Steel adds the collapse in the valuations of listed resource companies in 2008 has "only partly recovered in 2009 [and a] significant valuation gap persists between pre-IPO and public equity valuations in the natural resource sector".
Notwithstanding 2008's fall in the firm's sector of expertise, its Genus Dynamic Gold equities fund made 394% since launching in Apri 2003.
David Baker and Trevor Steel were previously at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, which was acquired by BlackRock.
Their renamed trust will charge a management fee of 1.75% and a 15% performance fee on gains exceeding 8%. This fee will be paid out only from realised gains.
