River and Mercantile to soft-close Hanbury's small cap fund at £550m

River and Mercantile has revealed it plans to close soft-close Dan Hanbury's UK Equity Smaller Companies fund - currently £360m in size - when it reaches £550m.

The fund, which launched in November 2006 and has run been run by Hanbury for the majority of its life, has grown rapidly in the last year thanks to its formidable performance record. The fund has returned 37.6% over the year to 30 May according to Morningstar versus a sector average of 23.2%, while over three years it has returned 95.7%, versus an average gain of 52.9%. Managing director Mark Thomas said the firm would look to soft-close the fund at £550m then hard-close it at £750m. He said: "Capacity is critical for small-cap funds so we are not going to run it to £1bn as we wan...