Invesco Asia Dragon (IAD) was listed in 1995 and was a fairly small trust up until early 2025, when what was then called Invesco Asia took over the much larger Asia Dragon. IAD is managed by Fiona Yang, who took on the lead role from Ian Hargreaves in May 2024, with Hargreaves remaining as co-manager. This trust holds a fairly concentrated portfolio of about 60 stocks, with about 50% in its top 10. Since management of the trust was moved back to Invesco's Henley office in 2004, IAD has built up an impressive performance record of around 13.5% a year, some two percentage points a year ahead of ...
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Tetragon Financial Group (TFG) is one of the oddities of the investment trust sector. Set up by the founders of a hedge fund called Polygon, it went public on Euronext in 2007 at $10 per share, listing on the London market in 2015, and introducing a separate sterling quote in 2018. Originally an investor in debt instruments called CLOs, its business model has evolved to focus on investments in private equity firms and the funds they manage, plus direct private investments and listed equities. Governance is a key concern here as management controls the trust's 10 voting shares, and all its list...
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Cordiant Digital Infrastructure (CORD) was listed in early 2021 and has spent around £800m assembling a highly concentrated portfolio of six assets, with 85% of the portfolio by value attributable to just two holdings: Emitel, a Polish digital broadcaster and telecoms infrastructure operator, and CRA, a Czech digital infrastructure platform. Over its first five years, CORD returned around 11% a year on a NAV basis, ahead of its 9% target. It has a progressive dividend policy, targeting 4.35p for the year ending March 2026, while its payout is covered 1.8 times by funds from operations. The rat...
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JPMorgan Claverhouse (JCH) was set up in 1963 and is a UK Equity Income trust with a market capitalisation of about £500m. Its dividend yield is 4.0%, a little higher than the sector average, and it sits in eighth position in the AIC's Dividend Heroes list with a 53-year record of increasing its payout. JCH is managed by the team of Anthony Lynch, Katen Patel, and Callum Abbot. Lynch and Patel were appointed in July 2024, while Abbot has been involved since 2018. JCH aims to hold between 60 and 80 companies and benchmarks itself against the FTSE All-Share with various weighting restrictions on...
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An increasing number of equity trusts are choosing to fix their dividends at a set proportion of their NAV, commonly referred to as an enhanced dividend, rather than the more traditional approach of basing their payout on the income they receive each year. A rule change in 2012 paved the way for this trend, although it took a few more years before it became more widely adopted. The last eighteen months or so have seen enhanced dividends surge in popularity, with 12 more trusts announcing such policies. It remains a divisive topic, with critics saying it adds costs and is essentially a trust ju...
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Patria Private Equity (PPET), previously known as Standard Life Private Equity and abrdn Private Equity Opportunities, celebrates its 25th anniversary as a listed company next month. Since its inception, its annualised NAV return is 10.9% versus 6.1% for the FTSE All-Share, while its annualised share price return has been 9.6%. PPET concentrates on European mid-market deals where entry valuations are between £100m and £1bn. It has nearly 700 underlying investments, working with many different private equity managers, but the majority of its holdings are with 17 core partners. Direct investment...
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Renewable energy infrastructure trusts have seen their discounts widen in each of the past four years, with the average discount now over 30%. A few trusts have wound down or been taken over, while a couple of proposed mergers did not find favour with shareholders. The surviving trusts have responded by initiating buybacks, selling assets to reduce gearing, and cutting their management fees, while a few have decided or been forced to reduce their dividend. Most renewable trusts have survived at least one continuation vote, but with discounts persisting, the sector looks set to shrink further o...
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TwentyFour Income Fund (TFIF) is the largest debt trust with assets of just under £1bn, investing predominantly in UK and European asset-backed securities, such as Collateralised Loan Obligations (CLO), Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS), and Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS). In October 2025, the trust expanded its geographic focus to include the US and Australia, although it has made limited investments in these countries so far. TFIF has generated annualised NAV returns of 8.0% since its IPO in 2013, which is towards the top end of its historical long-term return targe...
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This piece looks at how 76 trusts that joined the market over the last decade have fared in terms of shareholder returns. While a handful have performed well and produced annualised returns of more than 10%, around two dozen have generated negative returns since their IPOs, while 16 others have already been delisted, primarily because they were acquired after a period of lacklustre figures.
In my recent article on how the number of investment trusts has declined in the last four years, I listed the number of new issues we have had over the same period. There were only five of them, so it didn...
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BlackRock American Income (BRAI) has underperformed its US value benchmark since it joined the market in 2012, so it has reinvented itself. Initially, it adopted a sustainability-based approach, but since April 2025, it has been using a systematic strategy that combines "the power of big data, artificial intelligence and human expertise ... to unlock new ways to seek consistent portfolio outcomes and exploit market inefficiencies", a first for the investment trust sector. Its shareholders have been supportive, with an accompanying 20% tender offer at a 2% discount seeing a 16% take-up, no doub...
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