Aberdeen cuts management fee on Asian Smaller Companies trust

Follows number of recent fee changes

Daniel Flynn
clock • 1 min read

Aberdeen Asset Management has cut management fees on its £335m Asian Smaller Companies investment trust by 20bps, as many closed-ended funds review their charging structures.

The management fee on the trust, managed by Aberdeen's Asian equities team, has been reduced from 1.2% to 1%, effective from 1 August.

The fee will continue to be calculated as a percentage of the average net asset value of the trust's net assets over a 24-month period, valued monthly.

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According to FE, over three years to 16 September, the trust, launched in October 1995, has returned 2.3% against the AIC Asia Pacific excluding Japan Equities benchmark return of 27.7%.

However, over five years the trust's performance is more in line with targets, returning 52.4%, against a sector average of 57%.

Last month, Aberdeen also announced that fees on Hugh Young's £373m Asian trust have been cut from 1% to 0.85%.

The cuts also follow similar changes made by Baillie Gifford on two of its trusts earlier this month.

The boards of the Edinburgh-based company's $422m Baillie Gifford Japan trust and £27.8m Edinburgh Worldwide investment trust agreed an annual management fee of 0.95% on the first £50m of net assets and 0.65% on net assets above £50m, with an additional tier of 0.55% introduced on net assets above £250m.

Previously the AMC for both the Japan trust and Edinburgh Worldwide trust was calculated at 0.95% on the first £50m of net assets and 0.65% on the remainder.

Additionally, the Baring Emerging Europe trust scrapped its performance fee earlier this year, while the way the management fee was calculated on the Lindsell Train investment trust was adjusted in March so that the NAV of the investment company is used as a reference.

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