INVESTORS are being offered the chance to buy into the world’s first investment fund dedicated to luxury brands, such as Porsche, Louis Vuitton and Gucci.

The new fund, which requires a minimum investment of £5,000, will be floated on the Irish stock exchange on June 4 with a capitalisation of about £100m. The aim is to expand it to £1 billion in the following 12 months and cash in on global demand for luxury products.

It will be called Chic and be backed by Black Rock Merrill Lynch investment advisers, one of the world’s biggest fund managers, along with Dominion, another investment adviser, and the banks NM Rothschild and HSBC.

It will inevitably appeal to the super-wealthy, but the sponsors hope the fund will also attract a wide range of affluent and financially shrewd investors.

Unusually for an investment fund, Chic will reveal exactly which companies it will take stakes in. The biggest holdings will be in Apple, Diageo, LVMH, Sony, BMW and Nike, with further investments in Marc Jacobs, Fendi, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Prada, Tiffany and Bang & Olufsen.

Its backers claim that luxury-goods companies are growing much faster than other firms, propelled by huge demand across Europe and America and emerging markets in Asia and Russia.

Goldman Sachs recently forecast there would be 160m new consumers of luxury goods in China alone within four years.

Just over half the fund will be invested in Europe, 37% in America and 12% in Asia.

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