BlackRock Frontiers (BRFI), the £338m investor in sub-emerging and smaller emerging countries, beat its benchmark in the year to 30 September, putting it in a good position ahead of a five-yearly 100% exit opportunity in February. Fund managers Sam Vecht and Emily Fletcher delivered a 15.1% total underlying return in dollars (14.7% in sterling) that exceeded the 10.6% (10.2%) total return in its MSCI Frontier + Emerging ex Selected Countries index benchmark. This generated a $5.98m performance fee for BlackRock, up from $3.5m last year. The trust is currently the best performing emerging markets trust over five years with a total shareholder return of 88.5%. Over the year its best stocks were Lucky Cement, Lion Finance Group, Eldorado Gold, Emaar Properties and OTP bank, though its holdings in IT services stocks FPT, EPAM Systems and Endava Bloomberry and Ayala Land in the Philippines weighed on performance. A decision to add more to Pakistan paid off as the market more than doubled during the year on the back of support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) support and easing of interest rates. The trust’s weighting in the country rose from 4.1% to 5.9%.

Aberdeen New India (ANII) underperformed in the half year to 30 September with net asset value declining 4.3% against a 1.8% drop in the MSCI India index as the market favoured value stocks over the managers’ preference for quality growth companies. However, shareholders in the £349m investment trust came out ahead with a 1.1% gain as the share price discount narrowed from 15% to 10.2%. The portfolio, run by Aberdeen’s James Thom and Rita Tahilramani, faces a 25% tender offer if performance from April 2022 to September 2027 does not beat the benchmark. It is currently ahead with a 29.7% return versus 25% from the index. In the last financial year to 31 March it made an NAV total return of 11.7%, significantly outperforming the benchmark’s 0.7%.

International Public Partnerships (INPP), the £2.3bn infrastructure fund managed by Amber Infrastructure, has increased its share buyback programme by £25m to £225m and extended it for another year to 31 March 2027. This is to tackle a 16% share price discount that the company thinks undervalues the strength of its diversified, inflation-linked portfolio. This encompasses stakes in Cadent Gas, London’s super sewer Tideway, offshore transmission links and a range of public-private partnerships, to which it has recently added the construction of nuclear plant Sizewell C, where it is committing £254m over five years. In a trading statement for 1 July to 12 December, it said it had invested the first £35m tranche of this. Jamie Hossain succeeded Chris Morgan as lead portfolio manager in September.

Ashoka Whiteoak Emerging Markets (AWEM), the £58m investment trust run by Prashant Khemka at Acorn Asset Management, made a 19.9% underlying return in the six months to 30 September. This narrowly beat the 18.8% return of the MSCI Emerging Markets index although the actual shareholder return was in line with the benchmark. Since the company’s £30.5m launch two years ago, net asset value has grown by 46% ahead of the benchmark’s 36%. With the shares trading at a small premium on the back of the good performance, AWEM was able to issue over 3.2m shares, increasing its capital by 9.4%.

Aberdeen Group (ABDN) has added £1.5bn to its closed-end funds (CEFs) business with an acquisition of management contracts held by US fund manager MFS. Under the deal, four MFS municipal bond CEFs and one Aberdeen Municipal bond CEF will be merged to create a $1bn fund under Aberdeen’s management. Similarly, five MFS taxable fixed income funds will be merged to create a $1.4bn multi-sector fixed income CEF under the UK fund manager. This will be Aberdeen’s tenth US CEF acquisition since 2000 and, including its UK investment trust stable, lifts its total assets in closed end funds to £22.9bn globally.

RTW Biotech (RTW) increased net asset value by 8.5% last month with NAV per share of $2.56 per share at 30 November as the sector continued to rally on a rapprochement with US President Trump and the prospect of interest rates cuts. This compared to an 8.4% rise in the Nasdaq Biotech index and 12.1% surge in the Russell 2000 Biotech index. RTW said it had delivered 15.5% annualised growth in NAV per share since launch in October 2019.