Investment Trust Insider on Law Debenture – James Carthew: welcome to your new home Law Debenture
The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) has completed one of its periodic reviews of the classification of investment companies into its various sectors. As part of the reshuffle, a few funds have elected to switch sectors. One of these is Law Debenture (LWDB), which used to sit in the Global sector and has now been included within UK Equity Income.
Law Debenture’s sector move is not so much about changes it has made as how the Global sector has changed around it. If we went back 20 years, many of the trusts in the global sector had large exposures to the UK market. Law Debenture, which celebrates its 130th birthday at the end of this year, uses the UK’s FTSE All-Share Index as its benchmark, which was not uncommon back then either.
As pressure built for the ‘generalist’ trusts to make themselves more relevant to the needs of investors and investors became more conscious of the benefits of diversification, most of the global trusts switched more assets overseas.
Law Debenture was always different, however. It has a trading subsidiary, Independent Professional Services, which supplements its income; and an equity portfolio managed by James Henderson of Janus Henderson Investors that has always had a marked bias to the UK. Henderson also manages Lowland (LWI) in the same sector and Henderson Opportunities Trust (HOT) in UK All Companies.
The trading subsidiary offers a range of professional services. Law Debenture acts as… read more here