Wellcome Trust provides $500 million to NewSmith Capital Partners

London, Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest charitable foundation, has announced today that it will provide funding of over $500 million to NewSmith Capital Partners to seed existing and new funds and to enhance NewSmith’s investment platform. This investment is part of the Trust’s investment activities which support its charitable mission to foster and promote research to improve human and animal health.

The Wellcome Trust has an investment portfolio valued in excess of £12 billion that is broadly diversified across more than 300 investment managers in public equities, hedge funds, buyout funds, venture capital, healthcare, bonds, active currency and property. The Trust will continue to seek to invest with the best managers across a broad range of asset classes.

Founded in 2003, NewSmith Capital Partners is an independent asset management and advisory partnership. It has assets under management of approximately $5.5 billion in a range of strategies including long-only and long/short equity and credit. The Firm was recently named Asset Management Boutique of the Year by Financial News. NewSmith’s advisory business, NewSmith Financial Solutions, is an independent, debt-focused adviser.

Danny Truell, CIO of the Wellcome Trust, commented: “As part of our investment strategy to invest with the best managers, we are delighted to be partnering with NewSmith, whose depth of talent is outstanding. We have great confidence that they will be able to continue to deliver impressive investment returns to assist our charitable objectives.”

NewSmith Capital Partners said: “We are proud to be forming an important partnership with a Aaa/AAA charitable institution that has a sophisticated understanding of financial markets and a genuinely long-term investment horizon. Access to the Wellcome Trust’s funding will enable us to accelerate our programme of attracting outstanding managers to develop existing products and to launch new products for institutional investors.”

The Trust was advised by Lazard & Co. Ltd.

NewSmith was advised by Ernst & Young LLP.