Aberdeen has embarked on the latest step in its rationalisation of the funds acquired from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip).
Aberdeen, which has already renamed the Swip fund range and installed its own managers on many of them, is now planning to bring several of the funds under the Aberdeen fund umbrella.
As part of the reshuffle, the Aberdeen UK Equity Dividend fund, formerly a Swip product, is to be merged into the Aberdeen UK Equity Income fund.
Both funds are being run by Aberdeen’s Pan-European equity team and, subject to shareholder approval, will be merged on June 19.
Four other Swip funds are being merged into newly-created funds launched under Aberdeen’s UK authorised umbrella investment company, the Aberdeen UK Investment Funds ICVC.
Aberdeen said it was creating new sub-fund shells to accommodate the migration of the funds.
An Aberdeen Asset Management spokesperson said: “These fund mergers are part of our overall fund consolidation project following the acquisition of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip).
“The funds are migrating from a legacy Swip fund umbrella structure to Aberdeen’s. The funds will continue to be managed by the same teams employing the same investment approach.”
The Aberdeen Global High Yield Bond, World Government Bond and Financial Equity funds are all to be merged into new funds of the same name.
The Aberdeen Defensive Gilt will be merged into the newly-launched Aberdeen Sterling Short Term Government Bond fund, which will have the same managers and investment strategy as the Defensive Gilt fund.
All the mergers will take place on June 19.
One of the main changes for holders of the merging funds is that the new sub-funds will now have fixed ongoing expenses, under Aberdeen’s plans announced earlier this year.
However, this will not result in any immediate reduction in the funds’ ongoing charge figures (OCF), except in the case of the merger of the UK Equity Dividend fund into the UK Equity Income fund which will see a 0.02 per cent fee drop.
