Strachan: credit conditions make Canada more enticing than US

Alliance Trust's Matthew Strachan says the improving availability of credit in Canada makes the country a far more compelling investment case than the US.

Strachan, who manages the £50m North American Equity fund, says Canada will be the first of the G7 member countries to move from a federal deficit to a surplus, while its smaller businesses will recover more quickly than their US counterparts. As a result, he has built up a 15% holding in Canadian stocks against a benchmark weighting of 8.8%. This includes the addition of a 2% holding in Yellow Pages, a Canadian income trust that owns the Yellow Pages franchise. The trust will revert to a corporate structure at the end of the year, but is still expected to pay a dividend of 10%, says ...