Beleaguered investment trust Home REIT has officially handed all investment manager and alternative investment fund manager (AIFM) duties to AEW UK Investment Management.
Its former investment manager AIFM Alvarium Fund Managers, which came under fire for a string of scandals in May this year, has been replaced with immediate effect.
Following a general meeting yesterday (21 August), 99.98% of shareholders voted in favour of AEW UK Investment Management taking over as the trust’s investment manager and alternative investment fund manager (AIFM).
Alvarium Fund Managers faced criticism earlier this year following an internal investigation, which found the firm had “undisclosed potential outside business interests” and “potential conflicts of interest” between several people involved with the company. AEW was proposed as the trust’s new manager on the 23 May – one week before the report was published.
Home REIT, which holds £1.2bn of assets and is trading on a 68.9% discount to its net asset value, has seen three major tenants go bust this year alone. Lotus Sanctuary and Gen Liv UK, which accounted for 18.2% of the trust’s rent toll, entered voluntary liquidation in March, while Redemption Project CIC – which made up 11% of the trust’s rent in June alone – went bust earlier this month.
Last month, the trust’s board proposed a raft of changes to the ailing trust’s mandate, including moving away from solely investing in social housing to properties for “any form of residential use”.
