The move will complement the income range of its current manager, Aberdeen’s North American equity team based in Philadelphia, that already includes:
- Aberdeen Asian Income
- Aberdeen Latin American Income
- Dunedin Income Growth
- Dunedin Smaller Companies
- Murray Income
- Murray International
The trust’s current mandate is to provide index-tracking performance for the large-cap US market through full replication of the S&P 500 Index. The proposal is to now change the investment policy from passive to active management, with a bias toward providing above-average dividend income as well as long-term capital growth.
The official line is this is being done to “attract new investors and benefit existing shareholders by having an investment mandate with relevance to investors in the wider market for collective funds while maintaining exposure to US equities”.
The investment universe will remain S&P 500 companies and the initial net dividend yield targeted will be 3.5%. The manager will remain Paul Atkinson, head of North American equities at Aberdeen, and at outset he is expected to hold at least 50 stocks with no more than 10% in any one investment.
The management fee will change to 0.8% of gross assets; the TER will be no more than 1.%; the costs of the changes are not expected to exceed 0.3% of net assets.
