MURRAY Income Trust has highlighted the potential for stock market volatility following Brexit after achieving a strong performance amid political uncertainty in its latest year.
The £587 million trust, which is managed by Aberdeen Standard Investments, achieved a 7.9 per cent net asset total return in the year to June 30 compared with 0.6% for its benchmark the FTSE All-Share index.
Read more: Aberdeen Standard heavy hitter joining Royal London
Welcoming a return to form by the manager, Murray Income’s chairman Neil Rogan said the trust achieved its objectives of delivering a high and growing income combined with capital growth from a portfolio predominantly of UK equities.
“The Manager's relentless focus on quality has helped navigate successfully through some very uncertain times and a quicker reaction speed has helped to avoid any major mistakes in the past year,” said Mr Rogan.
He added: “The risk from Brexit is currently considered to be elevated due to continuing uncertainty about the political and regulatory outlook. In absolute terms, there is a risk of volatile markets post Brexit impacting the valuation of the portfolio even if the portfolio outperforms the market.”
Noting the trust’s managers Charles Luke and Iain Pyle belong to Aberdeen Standard Investments’ UK equity team, Mr Logan observed: “That there have been no changes to the wider team is testament to a successful merger between Aberdeen Asset Management PLC and Standard Life plc from our point of view.”
Read more: Aberdeen Standard forms property investment venture with Japanese bank
In their report as managers Mr Luke and Mr Pyle said “it is difficult to be confident about the shape of the outcome of Brexit or the US-Sino trade war.”
They think their focus on good quality companies with strong competitive positions and robust balance sheets under the stewardship of experienced management teams, combined with a disciplined approach to valuations, will stand the trust in good stead.
The managers said the trust sold its holding in fund management giant Schroders in the latest year, noting: “Industry dynamics have become less favourable, in particular the impact of passive funds and rising regulatory costs.”
The trust added energy giant SSE to its portfolio in the belief the long term attractions of the company's network and renewable assets have been overlooked by the market.
Total dividends per share in respect of the year increased to 34p, up 2.3% from 33.25p last time.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here