Investment trust mandates: When is a rest as good as a change?

Board activity has increased during pandemic

One of the advantages of the investment trust structure is having an independent board of directors to look after the best interests of shareholders.

These interests may include the need for something more radical than simply a higher dividend or a lower management fee. The hiring and firing of fund managers is one of the key responsibilities of the directors and, as shown by figures from the AIC, this is an area in which boards have stepped up activity since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The pandemic itself has been a seismic event and the initial shockwave that swept through equity markets in February and March 2020 caused most investment strategies to lose money. However, it was the ‘K-shaped' recovery that followed which...