Money News
Investment trust management group, F&C, is set to launch a new investment trust company by proposing to rollover its existing managed investment trust share portfolio services into a new vehicle: the F&C Managed Portfolio Trust. New investors will also be able to subscribe for shares in the trust.
The F&C Managed Portfolio Trust will provide investors with a choice of two distinct multi-manager portfolios of shares in closed-ended listed investment companies - one focused on income, the other on capital growth - enabling investors to benefit from diversification, improved tax efficiency and transparent share price performance.
The fund manager of F&C Managed Portfolio Trust will be closed-ended investment company expert Peter Hewitt, who has been responsible for F&C's existing managed investment trust share plans since 2002, as well as the F&C Progressive Growth Fund.
Hewitt is also part of the Edinburgh-based global equities team behind the F&C Multi-Manager Investment Trust Fund, an open-ended fund of investment trust shares.
Investors in legacy F&C managed investment trust share plans - including the ISIS Investment Trust Share Plan, PEP, ISA and TrustGuard Plan - will be offered the opportunity to either rollover into the F&C Managed Portfolio Trust, sell their investments or transfer existing holdings into their own name. Lifetime guarantees and investment protection on legacy savings plans will be unaffected for investors who rollover.
It is expected that the two separate portfolios will each comprise of at least 25 individual holdings, the majority of which will be equity investments. In recent years there has been a significant broadening of the areas in which investment companies invest and therefore the portfolios can access a wide range of asset classes other than, and not correlated with, equity markets in developed economies.
F&C Managed Portfolio Trust's Income Shares will be entitled to all the dividends of the company, which are expected to be paid quarterly.
A new mechanism is that any net income generated by the underlying Growth portfolio will be transferred to the Income Portfolio in exchange for a capital contribution of an identical amount. This structure will therefore help boost yield distributions for Income Share holders and enhance capital returns for Growth Share investors by providing a cost and tax efficient means of re-investing income.
There will also be the ability for investors to convert periodically between Income Shares and Growth Shares and vice versa; such conversions will not be subject to UK capital gains tax.
26 February 2008 © Moneyextra.com
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