Pantheon International (PIN), the £1.6bn private equity trust under pressure from activist investor Metage over its 28% share price discount, has cut the fund management fee it pays by an estimated 19%. From 1 June the company will pay Pantheon Ventures a flat rate of 1% of net asset value, which stood at £2.2bn at the last financial year-end of 31 May. This replaces the tiered fee of 1.5% on investment assets up to £150m and 1% above that. A 0.5% annual fee on undrawn investment commitments which stood at £693m has been scrapped. In the last financial year these changes would have saved shareholders £5.3m. The performance fee remains unchanged although it does not apply until the trust’s NAV per share exceeds 668p. It currently stands at 510.6p. Chair Tony Morgan said the new fee followed a rigorous comparison with PIN’s peer group and negotiation with Pantheon. “We believe that this new structure is simpler, more streamlined and cost competitive.”
Pershing Square (PSH) outperformed the stock market last year with a push into tech stocks such as Meta and Amazon where 10.6% and 13.3% of assets are held. The £7.9bn hedge fund run by Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management generated an underlying investment return of 20.9% in 2025 that beat the S&P 500’s 17.9% total return. Shareholders did better with a 33.9% total return as the share price discount to net asset value narrowed from 31.2% to 24.1% with the company buying back $220m of shares at an average 28.8% below NAV. Gearing, or borrowing, of 19.5% of total assets boosted the investment return as did the strong performances of Alphabet, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Brookfield, although declines in Chipotle and Nike weighed. Quarterly dividends from the US dollar based fund will rise to 18.35 cents per share this year from 16.46 in 2025.
Polar Capital Financials Trust (PCFT) matched its MSCI ACWI Financials index in the year to 30 November with a 13.9% total investment return helped by an overweight to Europe and strong performances from banks, particularly in southern Europe where a normalisation in interest rates boosted profits. Shareholders did slightly better than the underlying rise in net asset value (NAV) with a 14.5% total shareholder return as the share price discount narrowed slightly to 5.1% responding to the five-year tender offer that saw 43.8% of shares redeemed amid ongoing share buybacks. Dividends rose to 6.75p per share from 4.7p in 2024, partly covered by earnings per share up to 5.6p from 5.31p. From December, the trust has adopted an enhanced dividend policy that will see it pay out 4% of NAV at 1% a quarter.
Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon (BGS) shareholders have approved all the tender offer proposals made by the Japan smaller companies trust in December. The 15% tender offer was backed by 99% of votes and the removal of the 2027 conditional tender offer passed alongside the introduction of a 2030 performance-related tender and the holding of a continuation vote at the AGM in 2028.
Strategic Equity Capital (SEC) has announced a second payment to shareholders who sold 9.5m shares in the tender offer last September. The UK smaller companies trust, which made a first payment in November, will buy 2.4m shares on 24 February at 410p. Following this payment, SEC will have repurchased about three quarters of the shares tendered.
TwentyFour Income Fund (TFIF) has launched a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) to enable individual shareholders to reinvest their full cash dividend into shares.
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