Montanaro European Smaller Companies Trust underperformed its benchmark, the MSCI Europe SmallCap ex UK Index, over the year to the end of March 2015 – falling by 3.6% vs. a 1.6% increase in the Index. The discount widened slightly as well leaving the share price 4.6% lower. return were held back by the weak Euro which they think took about 80p or almost 10% off the net asset value. The total dividend for the year is 7.5p, an increase of 7.1% on the previous year.
100,000 shares were reissued from treasury at a discount during the period.
The announcement does not include a report from the investment manager so we have no indication of why performance was poor. The Board do say they’ve talked about it with managers and understand the reasons for the underperformance but haven’t outlined what they were in the statement.
MTE : Montanaro European lags benchmark by more than 5%