By Ian McConnell
Business Editor
THE £677 million Scottish Investment Trust, a self-managed fund formed in 1887, has invited proposals from external asset managers following a five-year period in which it has underperformed a key global equities index.
The Edinburgh-based trust said these proposals would be considered alongside current arrangements.
Announcing the board’s review of investment management arrangements in a statement to the stock market yesterday, SIT said Stanhope Consulting had been appointed to assist in this process. It added there was “no certainty” any changes would result, with the board noting “strong recent short-term performance”.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: Is Boris Johnson Australia trade deal more trouble than it is worth?
The trust, of which Alasdair McKinnon is lead manager, noted it had adopted a “high conviction, global contrarian investment approach” in 2015.
It said: “The board’s view was that a period of at least five years would be required to evaluate the company’s returns under this mandate. The company does not have a formal benchmark but, by way of comparison, the company’s NAV (net asset value) total return has underperformed the sterling total return of the MSCI All Country World Index over the five years ended April 30, 2021.”
READ MORE: East Renfrewshire call might have been watershed moment: Opinion: Ian McConnell
SIT added: “The board has therefore appointed Stanhope Consulting to assist it in the review of the company’s investment management arrangements. The board invites proposals from established fund management groups, with the experience of managing listed closed-ended funds, designed to deliver, over the longer term, above-index returns through a diversified global portfolio of attractively valued companies with good earnings prospects and sustainable dividend growth. Any such proposals will be considered alongside the current management arrangements, which the board notes have delivered strong recent short-term performance.”
The trust declared that “interested parties are invited to contact Stanhope Consulting”.
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