Keeping shareholders satisfied

Share buy-backs and better communication are a must if shareholders are to be kept happy in the post split-cap crisis era

Shareholders like certainty. So it is no surprise that widely fluctuating discounts have not helped the perception of investment trusts, particularly while they remain under pressure from the split cap debacle. Private investors, therefore, tend to opt for the more widely promoted unit trusts and Oeics, despite the much wider spread between buying and selling prices and generally higher annual management charges. But one of the advantages of investment trusts over other investment vehicles is, or at least it should be, that they have independent boards of directors whose duty it is to l...