The investment manager of UK listed investment trust Alliance Trust [LON:ATST], Willis Towers Watson, has today appointed Dalton Investments as a new stock picker for its multi-manager global equity portfolio.
Dalton will receive a 4% allocation of capital funded by a reallocation of the portfolio from the existing nine stock pickers, Willis Towers Watson confirmed this morning. This takes the stock picker line-up to ten for Alliance Trust.
Craig Baker, chairman of Willis Towers Watson’s investment committee, said: “Following extensive corporate governance reforms, we believe the Japanese corporate sector is on the cusp of a long-term revival, but it is a unique market which requires specialist, active manager skills to navigate and tap its potential.”
Dalton is a value-focused, employee-owned manager that looks to exploit mispricing opportunities in the most under-researched companies in Japan, which generally steers its focus to small and mid-cap companies.
Willis Towers Watson said it believes that the appointment of Dalton will bring a differentiated approach to the Alliance Trust portfolio, providing further diversification and outperformance potential.
Alliance Trust will be marginally overweight Japan
In keeping with Willis Towers Watson’s philosophy for the Alliance Trust portfolio, the overall exposure of the portfolio will remain broadly style, sector and region neutral, seeking to generate market outperformance from stock selection. The introduction of Dalton will result in the portfolio having a marginal overweight position in Japan relative to benchmark.
Alliance Trust aims to deliver long-term capital growth and rising income from investing in global equities at a competitive cost. The trust’s investment manager blends the top stock selections of some of the world’s best active managers into a single diversified portfolio designed to outperform the market while carefully managing risk and volatility.
Alliance Trust is also an AIC Dividend Hero with 56 consecutive years of rising dividends. The trust is currently up +2.79% over the last six months and +8.52% over 12 months.
