Literacy Capital (BOOK) owns a concentrated portfolio of small UK unquoted companies and was founded by the father-and-son team of Paul and Richard Pindar in 2017 with initial funding of £54m. It joined the Specialist Funds Segment of the London market in June 2021 at 160p per share and a £96m valuation, but raised no fresh capital. Unlike other private equity trusts, it charges no performance fee or carried interest. It donates 0.5% annually to literacy charities, in addition to its 1.5% management fee. Strong early returns saw BOOK's share price climb above £5 by mid-2023, often trading at a...
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Murray International (MYI) was launched in 1907 and has followed a global equity income mandate since the mid-1980s. It is comfortably the largest trust in the Aberdeen stable with net assets of around £2.2bn. Bruce Stout managed MYI from 2004 to 2024 before handing over the reins to Martin Connaghan and Samantha Fitzpatrick, who had both worked alongside him for 25 years. Its annualised total return over the 22 years to the end of 2025 was just under 11% on a NAV basis, around one percentage point better than the various benchmarks that the trust has used, with individual yearly returns often...
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Baillie Gifford UK Growth (BGUK) was managed by Schroders from its IPO in 1994 until June 2018, during which time it was known as Schroder UK Growth. The trust's directors appointed Baillie Gifford after a prolonged period of underperformance and a persistent discount. Although returns improved for a few years, the switch away from growth stocks in 2022 has seen BGUK underperform its benchmark in each of the last five financial years. A 100% performance-related tender offer at a 2% discount has been promised, measured over the five years to April 2029, and an additional continuation vote is du...
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Ruffer Investment Company (RICA) was launched in 2004, and it is one of a handful of wealth-preservation trusts that sit within the AIC's Flexible sector. It follows the Ruffer investment approach of aiming to "generate consistent positive returns, however financial markets are performing." To date, RICA has largely succeeded in doing that, with just a handful of negative financial years, all of which resulted in losses of less than 3%. The Ruffer strategy has also stayed ahead of its two comparators over the last three decades, being the FTSE All-Share and twice the UK bank rate. RICA tends t...
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HarbourVest Global Private Equity was launched in 2007 and is the largest fund-of-funds private equity trust with gross assets of around £3.5bn and a market cap of £2.4bn. Its NAV returns since inception are just over 10% a year, around two percentage points ahead of global markets, making it one of the best long-term performers in its sector. Like many private equity trusts, however, it has long traded at a wide discount. After doing very little in the way of discount control for many years, it has announced a range of measures since 2022, including allocating 30% of distributions received to...
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Utilico Emerging Markets (UEM) was launched in July 2005 to invest in utilities and infrastructure stocks that operate in emerging markets. It performed strongly in the run-up to the global financial crisis, and bulked up with two large fundraises. Its performance since 2014 has been more muted, but NAV returns since inception are a respectable 9.5% a year, just ahead of the 9.2% year produced by the broader MSCI Emerging Markets index. UEM's discount widened steadily from 2014 onwards, and in May 2025, Saba Capital appeared on the register with a 6% stake. In August 2025, UEM introduced a fiv...
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Ashoka India Equity (ticker: AIE) joined the London market in July 2018, raising a modest £46m at 100p per share. It has been the best performer of the four Indian trusts since it was launched, and this has led to it frequently trading at a premium rating. Ongoing regular issuance has seen its share count rise from 46m to 169m and its net assets increase nearly tenfold to £440m. AIE also offers an uncapped annual redemption facility, which has so far seen very modest take-up. The highly-rated Indian market has struggled in the last couple of years, though, and so AIE currently trades at a 5% d...
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TwentyFour Select Monthly Income (SMIF) is the smaller of two debt trusts run by TwentyFour Asset Management and is unique in the sector in paying monthly dividends. It was launched in March 2014, raising just over £100m and setting an annualised total return target of between 8 and 10%. It usually sets a 6.0p annual dividend target, paying out 0.5p per month throughout the year, with a larger twelfth payment to reflect any additional net income it has received. The trust holds quarterly tender offers at a 2% discount, but it has nearly always traded at a premium, so it has been a regular issu...
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AVI Global Trust (ticker: AGT) was founded in 1889 and has been managed by Asset Value Investors (AVI) for the last four decades, over which time it has returned 11.3% per year. Joe Bauernfreund has acted as its lead manager since 2015. AGT seeks to buy quality companies trading at a discount to their net assets, and it holds a concentrated portfolio of closed-ended funds and European/Asian family-run holding companies, recently increasing its exposure towards Korea. Its portfolio looks very different from most other global trusts, tilted away from the US and with a much smaller average market...
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3i Infrastructure (3IN) is the best-performing of the veteran infrastructure trusts, having returned 11% a year on a share price total return basis since its 2007 IPO, and just over 12% on an NAV basis, both well ahead of its 8-10% annual return target. Initially, 3IN focused on lower-risk core infrastructure assets, but around a decade ago, it began to shift towards higher-risk/higher-return core plus infrastructure. It has a very concentrated portfolio, typically around 10-12 holdings, spanning a range of infrastructure businesses, including data centres, subsea cables, cold storage and ster...
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