Stellar Asset Management is now offering investors access to Feed-in Tariffs in their flagship product The Stellar Trading Companies (“STC”). The IHT mitigation investment opportunity is also offering access to Asset Finance deals for those clients who are seeking to minimise their IHT bill and complements the existing trades, residential property development and commercial forestry. STC is a flexible planning tool investing in asset backed trades.

Jonathan Gain, CEO, Stellar Asset Management commented:

“The government continues to discourage the use of trusts for IHT mitigation and coupled with the turbulence in the economy, means that more traditional IHT planning is losing some appeal. Financial advisers and their clients are seeking lower risk opportunities and a significant number now use business property solutions. We are offering the four selected trades in STC as they are all asset backed, ungeared and therefore lower risk and the feed-in tariff trade is, to my knowledge, the first time this trading business has been used as an IHT mitigation tool. The small scale solar industry has retained the benefit of the government subsidy, where large scale has not and remains an attractive growth proposition.

Intermediary feedback suggests investors like this model for a number of reasons: firstly the investors retain control as they decide whether to participate in all or some of the asset backed trades; secondly investors have security as all projects will be underpinned by an assets and they will not borrow; the trades also offer investors the opportunity to draw income should they wish to and Stellar will not charge fees on uninvested money or on projects which exceed their anticipated timeframe.”

How it Works:

Stellar Trading Companies provides investors with control of their own limited company which will invest in a range of asset backed trading opportunities in partnership with other like minded investors. All these opportunities are chosen as they provide business property relief and will therefore qualify for exemption from IHT after just two years.

The Feed-in tariff option will employ a portfolio approach where Stellar partners with solar panel developers to install solar panels on domestic properties and smaller commercial buildings such as schools. Under the FiTs scheme any person or company will receive a fixed tariff for each kilowatt hour generated and a further tariff for any electricity generated but consumed that is then sold into the national grid. If the project exceeds the original estimated timeframe then Stellar will not charge management fees in respect of the excess period.

The Asset Finance trade option seeks to provide SMEs capital to purchase critical business equipment. Stellar will work with experienced equipment leasing managers to source suitable transactions across a range of sectors on assets with a life 50% longer than the financing period. The borrower must have clean credit history and may have to provide a personal guarantee and charge over the asset. Returns are generated through repayments consisting of interest and loan capital repayment

Investments made in The Stellar Trading Companies must be a minimum of £ 40,000. The initial charge is 5% from which 3% commission is available to intermediaries as is trail commission of 0.5% per annum from a total AMC of 1.95%.