Objective

To provide shareholders with a balanced portfolio of investments in the Asia Pacific region with the aim of outperforming the MSCI AC Asia Pacific Free Index (£).

Profile

The Trust’s portfolio is outsourced to two managers, Aberdeen Asset Management and Nomura Asset Management, each managing Asia cum Japan mandates aiming to outperform the MSCI AC Asia Pacific Free Index (£). Aberdeen is more focused on stock-picking and generally has a lower weight in Japan. By contrast, Nomura has a more diversified approach, paying more attention to regional weightings within the benchmark index. The aim of employing this combined approach is to smooth out the volatility associated with a single manager. The result of their independent judgments is that the trust has active weightings that are very different from the index.

Strategy

• Use an active multi-manager approach to add value and diversify risk.
• Manage the fund for growth predominantly through capital return.
• Employ share buy-backs when the Company's shares are standing at an anomalous discount to their net asset value.
• Deploy moderate levels of gearing to augment long-term returns while giving discretion to the Investment Managers to hold up to 10% of the portfolio in cash.
• Aim to grow the dividend per share in real terms, subject to market circumstances and an overriding test of prudence.
• Control costs and expenses to maintain a total expense ratio (excluding performance fees) of less than 1%.