Seneca renames Miton trust after takeover

Seneca Asset Managers bought Miton Capital Partners in March this year and has already changed the names on the open-ended funds it took on as part of the deal.

Now the board of the Miton Income & Growth Trust has said Seneca plans to change the name of the trust to Seneca Global Income & Growth.

The managers, Alan Borrows and Simon Callow, moved across to Seneca from Miton and continue to manage the trust alongside their team.

The board added that Seneca was providing “additional resources and commitment” to the trust, particularly in terms of marketing and had also reduced charges.

“To maximise the benefit of these additional resources and to emphasise the trust’s global remit, it is proposed to change the name to Seneca Global Income & Growth Trust,” chairman Richard Ramsay said.

“In addition, your manager, as evidence of its aim to enlarge your trust, has volunteered a change to the investment management fee under which the fee rate will reduce to 0.65 per cent per annum of market capitalisation above £50m and remain at 0.9 per cent up to that level (previously it was at a flat rate of 0.9 per cent).”

The fee change took effect on July 1.

The trust announced the name change in its annual results this morning, which showed a share price total return of 9.9 per cent compared to the 3.6 per cent return from its 3-month Libor +3 per cent benchmark.

“This reinforced the company’s recent success, and as at April 30 2014, the trust’s net asset value total return, since the introduction of the new investment policy in January 2012, was 32.8 per cent,” Mr Ramsay added.

“Over the same period the benchmark return was 8.6 per cent. The trust has performed strongly and, in spite of the degree of outperformance of the benchmark, has done so in the context of a volatility level that was substantially lower than that of the market and other trusts in the Global Equity Income sector in both the year and since January 2012.”