The change of manager at the £794m Temple Bar investment trust has prompted Phillip Matthews, joint manager of the TB Wise Multi-Asset income fund, to buy the shares.
The Temple Bar investment trust had been run for many years by Alistair Mundy at Investec Asset Management. Mr Mundy has since left the industry, and the trust has, since September, been run by Nick Purves and Ian Lance, at RWC.
That duo are value fund managers, as had been Mr Mundy. The value style of investing has been sharply out of favor in recent years, and the trust has lost 12 per cent over the past three years, compared with a gain of just over 1 per cent for the average trust in the AIC UK Equity Income sector in the same time period.
Mr Purves and Mr Lance also deploy the value style of investing, something which Mr Matthews said is aligned with his own view of the market.
He added: “Following the announcement that it was to change investment manager to the highly regarded team at RWC, the Temple Bar fund will be run with a similar value process to our own.
"We were able to fund this investment out of a basket of existing UK equity holdings and invest at a discount to NAV of more than 10 per cent whilst receiving a committed dividend yield over 5.3 per cent.”
Mr Matthews has also bought the £246m Schroders UK Mid Cap trust, which yields just over 3 per cent, and which he hopes will provide additional capital gains in his portfolio.
