NEW YORK (AP) -- WhiteHorse Finance, a lender to small companies, raised $100 million from investors in its initial public offering Wednesday.
WhiteHorse Finance sold 6.7 million shares of its common stock at a price of $15 per share. The banks that shepherded the Miami-based company through the IPO process have the option to buy an additional 1 million shares of WhiteHorse Finance's stock.
The company, an affiliate of the fund H.I.G. Capital, is essentially an investment fund. It plans to use the money raised from investors for loans to businesses and expects to be treated as a business development company, a publicly traded lender to small, usually private companies.
BDCs avoid paying income tax by distributing the bulk of their income to shareholders. Some of the better-known BDCs are Ares Capital Corp. and American Capital Ltd.
WhiteHorse Finance's stock is scheduled to begin trading Wednesday on the Nasdaq under the symbol WHF.
The investment banking arms of Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Barclays Capital were the lead underwriters.
