Schroder Japan (SJG) was listed in 1994 when it raised £120m at 100p per share. Although it was launched five years after the peak of the market, its shares effectively moved sideways for almost two decades as Japanese equities took a very long time to fully recover from the excesses of the 1980s. Since 2012, however, SJG's shares have roughly trebled and its market cap is now around £285m. Masaki Taketsume took over as lead manager in 2019 and he has outperformed the trust's benchmark for each of the last four years using a value-based approach to identify pricing inefficiencies in individual...
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CC Japan Income & Growth (ticker: CCJI) was launched at the end of 2015 raising £66.5m at 100p per share. However, its strong early performance enabled three placings and plenty of regular issuance and this saw its share count double by 2019. CCJI's annualised NAV return over its first eight years was 10.1%, well ahead of the 7.6% a year generated by the TOPIX and it has been the best performer in the AIC's Japan sector over both the last three and five years. The trust is managed by a small boutique called Chikara Investments, known until recently as Coupland Cardiff, and the portfolio ma...
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JPMorgan Japanese (ticker: JFJ) was launched in 1927 as The Capital & National Trust and has been focused on Japanese equities since 1982. This trust has been managed by Nicholas Weindling since 2007 with Miyako Urabe coming on board as co-manager more recently in 2019. JFJ invests in a relatively concentrated portfolio of quality growth stocks and normally uses a low double-digit level of gearing, benefiting from low-rate yen loans. Returns since Weindling became the lead manager in 2010 have been 9.0% on an annualised NAV basis compared to 7.6% for the TOPIX benchmark although JFJ has un...
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Baillie Gifford Japan (ticker: BGFD) was launched in 1981 and experienced incredible growth during its first decade thanks to the 'Japanese economic miracle' with its share price rising almost tenfold. As most investors will know, Japanese equities have struggled ever since. But under the leadership of Sarah Whitley, Baillie Gifford Japan significantly outperformed its benchmark. From her 1991 appointment as lead manager to her retirement in 2018, the trust returned 545% in sterling terms compared to the Japanese market's 156%. Matthew Brett, who served as Whitley's deputy, took over the lead ...
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