Agent Provocateur’s private equity fund returns H1 1 billion pounds

3i, the British private equity firm that owns high end lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, said on Thursday its private equity business made returns of almost one billion pounds in the six months to September, 30. The company jumped into weaker sterling’s winners’ wagon.

The investment group, which portfolio includes companies across different sectors in northern Europe and North America, produced an investment return of 1 billion pounds or 23 percent of opening shareholders' funds compared to 168 million in the same period in 2015, as reported by Reuters.

3i said its lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur continued to be impacted by falling luxury spending and had also suffered from the inconsistent execution of its recent store expansion program and the discovery of accounting issues.

"Reflecting these challenges, we reduced the value of our investment by 39 million pounds in the period," 3i said in a corporate release Thursday.

Looking ahead, CEO Simon Borrows said the London-listed group would continue to be active in both deploying capital and realising its investments for the remainder of the financial year, which ends in March 2017.

"I believe we are going to be locked into a low interest rate environment in Europe, where most of our investments are, for some time to come," Borrows said on a call with reporters.

Borrows also advanced that there had been limited impact of Britain's vote to leave the European Union on the group but the steep fall in sterling added translation benefit to the investment portfolio's performance as it is reported in pounds. The group recorded a total net foreign exchange gain of 283 million pounds.