OREANDA-NEWS. Henderson Alternative Strategies Trust (HAST, formerly Henderson Value Trust) has been reconstructed into a portfolio of specialist and alternative funds. The managers have focused on private equity, hedge funds, property and specialist sector and geographical funds that individual investors are unable or unlikely to access. The aim is to achieve returns in excess of those from global equities on a three-year view, but with limited correlation to equity markets. The reconstruction is beginning to show through in performance, and over 12 months the trust has outperformed its informal composite benchmark and the FTSE All-Share. The discount remains wide at c 19%, reflecting a difficult history and a climate of investor risk aversion, but has scope to narrow should the performance upturn be sustained. 

At 7 March HAST's shares traded at an 18.6% discount to cum-income NAV. While wide, this is in line with the one-year average of 19.7%. Under Henderson the discount has averaged 17.2%. The board manages the discount principally through tender offers, the next of which is likely to be at the start of 2017. The current level of discount may reflect increased investor risk aversion towards non-mainstream assets, as well as HAST's lacklustre performance history during the reconstruction, meaning there is scope for it to narrow as improvements bed in.

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