Investment trust insider on Standard Life Investments Property Income – James Carthew: Standard Life Reit’s reward is yet to come
Against the backdrop of COP26, there has been a great deal of focus on issues of sustainability in recent months. This is not going away: a raft of initiatives have been launched to encourage and require financial institutions and companies to report on how they will transition to net-zero carbon emissions.
The investment companies industry encompasses businesses at the forefront of the shift to renewables, improved energy efficiency, tackling social issues and promoting good governance. Some fund managers have been quite creative in the ways they incorporate these issues into their investment approach.
This week, let’s look at what Jason Baggaley has been up to at Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust (SLI).
With a market value just shy of £300m, SLI is about mid-ranked in the Association of Investment Companies’ UK Commercial Property sector.
As an aside, I feel strongly these investment companies should be made a lot bigger by absorbing the managers’ open-ended property funds. It is obvious to nearly everyone that open-ended structures are completely inappropriate for illiquid assets like property.
For reasons I fail to understand, the Financial Conduct Authority consistently opts to increase the complexity of these open-ended structures rather than promote the simple solution of compelling them to become real estate investment trusts.
SLI shares trade on a discount of 19% below net asset value (NAV), which is too wide and unjustified in my view… read more here