OREANDA-NEWS. December 22, 2015. The Brunner Investment Trust (BUT) began life as a vehicle for managing the wealth of one of the founding families of ICI, a role it continues to fulfil, as well as offering other investors access to its diversified portfolio of global equities. Managed by Allianz Global Investors (AllianzGI), it seeks to achieve long-term capital and income growth, and has grown its dividend (which has been paid quarterly since 2014) for 43 years in a row.

The bottom-up investment process makes extensive use of AllianzGI's global research resources, and the managers are increasingly focused on increasing the portion of the trust's dividend yield (one of the highest in its sector) that comes from overseas. Expensive gearing has historically been a headwind, but this will begin to abate from January 2018.

At 15 December, BUT's shares traded at an 11.1% discount to cum-income NAV (with debt at market value). This is a little narrower than the one-, three- and five-year averages of 12.6%, 12.9% and 12.5% respectively, in spite of recent market volatility, and represents a partial recovery towards the three-year narrowest point of 8.1%, reached in late July. BUT's discount has tended to be wider than those of its peers, perhaps as a result of its relatively expensive fixed gearing; with the first tranche due to mature in a little over two years, there is potential for a more sustainable narrowing over the medium term.

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