A fund launched by Cherie Blair to invest in healthcare and technology companies around the world is being shut down.
The closure of the Allele Fund comes after the collapse last year of a chain of private healthcare centres backed by the wife of the former prime minister.
Investors who put hundreds of thousands of pounds into the private equity fund registered in the offshore tax haven of the Cayman Islands were likely to lose all their money, according to The Sunday Telegraph.
The fund was founded in 2008 by Mrs Blair and Gail Lese, a doctor and fund manager, although it is not clear how much Mrs Blair invested personally in the scheme. “Like each of you,” Dr Lese reportedly told investors in January, “I have lost a substantial investment in the Allele Fund.”
One of the fund’s first UK ventures was Mee Healthcare,a chain of 11 private health clinics. The brand’s parent company, Worldwide Health and Wellness Centres, went into liquidation last year.
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The letter from Dr Lese to investors disclosed that there was no money left in Mee Healthcare or any of its affiliated companies, the newspaper said. “It is expected that we will close the Allele Fund as soon as practical,” she wrote.