UPDATE: Following the trust's continued underperformance, Brian Lum took over from Praveen Kumar as lead manager in May 2025. The trust returned -5.1% versus +8.9% for its benchmark in the year to January 2025, followed by +5.4% versus +21.5% to January 2026, and +22.9% versus +13.3% in the six months to July 2026. The management fee was cut to 0.65% on the first £250m of net assets and 0.55% thereafter with effect from February 2026. A 15% conditional tender offer covering the three years to January 2027 was replaced by an immediate 15% tender offer that took place in March 2026, in which 50%...
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UPDATE (Oct 2026): NAVF returned +23.1% versus +7.8% for its benchmark in 2023, followed by +15.2% versus +6.8% in 2024, +17.4% versus +19.8% in 2025, and +5.2% versus +17.7% in the first half of 2026.
Nippon Active Value Fund (ticker: NAVF) was launched in early 2020 raising £103m just before the pandemic struck. Similar to AVI Japan Opportunity, NAVF looks to invest in undervalued Japanese smaller companies whose share prices should benefit from the ongoing corporate governance reforms being pushed by both the Japanese government and the Tokyo Stock Exchange. NAVF has a concentrated portfol...
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UPDATE (Sep 2026): AJOT returned +16% in 2023 versus +11% for its benchmark, +21% versus +6% in 2024, +15% versus +20% in 2025, and -2% versus +18% in the first half of 2026. The average discount over the last three years has been around 2.5%. In late 2025, the trust took on £184m of assets from Fidelity Japan, nearly doubling in size. 2.6% of shares took up its tender offer opportunity in late 2024, at which point the frequency of subsequent offers was reduced from two years to one year. The late 2025 tender offer saw a 10.9% take-up.
AVI Japan Opportunity (ticker: AJOT) was launched in 2018...
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