Group heads pack in 2007 awards with seven shortlisted trusts across the categories
JP Morgan, Baillie Gifford and Merrill Lynch are the frontrunners in this year's Investment Week Investment Trust Awards, with seven JPM vehicles nominated in various categories and four each for the other two groups.
JPM has three trusts shortlisted in the Country Specialist sector - Indian, Chinese and Russian Securities - plus Mid Cap, Smaller Companies, Emerging Markets and European Fledgeling.
Shortlists for the various categories are listed here, with the group nominations to be announced in October.
The judging panel has welcomed several new members this year, adding some of the industry's top investment-trust buyers. Joining are Julie Dent from F&C, Laurie Petar from Jupiter and David Marchant from Halifax.
Returning members of the panel are iimia's Nick Greenwood, Progressive's James Carthew and Citywall's Peter Metcalfe, plus IW's editor James Smith and news editor Mark Preskett.
After feedback from the industry, the panel decided to tweak some of the categories, adding in separate awards for property and hedge fund vehicles and separating out VCTs and private equity products.
Elsewhere, US vehicles have come out of the Global category and moved into single country.Overall, the aim of the awards is to highlight trusts that produce consistent performance and where, in the view of the judges, there is a high chance investors will not be disappointed in future.
These awards use an initial quants screen very similar to that in Investment Week's fund manager of the year awards, looking at Nav returns generated in each of the three discrete years to 31 July 2007, with the emphasis on more recent performance.
While the investment track record of a trust is best considered by looking at Nav, the end return an investor receives depends on the share price. As such, the panel also considers how well each trust on the shortlist has managed its own structure, not least its discount-control mechanism.
All performance data is run up to 31 July 2007, supplied by the AITC and Fundamental Data. All trusts with assets of less than £15m and less than a three-year track record are stripped out.
Each trust has its Nav returns measured over three discrete periods: 12 months to 31 July 2007, 12 months to 31 July 2006 and 12 months to 31 July 2005, as well as its total return for three years to 31 July 2007.
Each trust is then given a percentile ranking for its Nav performance in each of these periods, with a 40% weighting for the most recent year, 30% for the middle period, 20% for the 12 months to end July 2005 and 10% from the three-year total return.
Trusts that are in the bottom half of their AIC sectors over the 12 months to 31 July 2007 are then stripped out.
This quants process reveals the top-performing funds in the various sectors, and the panel draws up the shortlists from these. The shortlisted groups are then asked to fill in a questionnaire detailing how they achieve their performance and the panel makes a decision on the eventual winner based on these.
For the group of the year award, all trusts with a three-year track record and assets of more than £15m are considered, along with the quants score generated for each (see above).
Winners will be announced on Tuesday 13 September at Lindley Hall in London.
