Venture-capital trusts – buy at your peril

High-profile venture-capital successes tempt ordinary investors, but be careful, says Max King.

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Everyone's looking for the next eBay
(Image credit: Hocus Focus Studio)

In 1997, venture-capital company Benchmark invested $6.7m in a small online auction company called eBay. By the spring of 1999 that stake was worth $5bn. In 2000, SoftBank, a Japanese company founded by Masayoshi Son in 1981, invested $20m in a fledgling Chinese venture called Alibaba. When Alibaba went public in 2005, that stake was worth $5bn.

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Max King
Investment Writer

Max has an Economics degree from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered accountant. He worked at Investec Asset Management for 12 years, managing multi-asset funds investing in internally and externally managed funds, including investment trusts. This included a fund of investment trusts which grew to £120m+. Max has managed ten investment trusts (winning many awards) and sat on the boards of three trusts – two directorships are still active.

After 39 years in financial services, including 30 as a professional fund manager, Max took semi-retirement in 2017. Max has been a MoneyWeek columnist since 2016 writing about investment funds and more generally on markets online, plus occasional opinion pieces. He also writes for the Investment Trust Handbook each year and has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and other publications. See here for details of current investments held by Max.