Personal Assets is an investment trust run expressly for private investors. Its capital structure is the simplest possible for an investment trust, consisting only of Ordinary shares. Its investment objective is to protect and increase *(in that order)* the value of shareholders' funds over the long term and to earn as high a total return as is compatible with a risk equivalent to that of the FTSE All-Share Index. Since Personal Assets invests for the long term, the Board assesses performance not annually at the end of each accounting year but over rolling three-year periods.
We aim to pay as high, secure and sustainable a dividend as is compatible with maintaining our investment flexibility. We intend the present dividend rate to grow in real terms and it is our policy never to cut the dividend rate, so shareholders know that each half-yearly payment will at least equal the previous one.
Personal Assets is run by its Board. The Directors and their families together hold shares in the Company worth £15.7 million at the year ended 30 April 2008. Those who manage Personal Assets therefore have a community of interest with those who invest in it.
The Board regards Personal Assets as being in business primarily to provide the best service it can to its shareholders, whom we envisage as being private investors who either have a substantial amount of capital or expect to build it out of income. This objective is reflected in our range of zero-charge investment plans and in the Quarterly Reports we send to shareholders.
The Board aims to provide tax-efficient and cost-effective ways for shareholders to invest in the Company. These include a zero-charge ISA and a zero-charge Investment Plan. The Investment Plan provides three options: a Single Investment Option; a Monthly Investment Option; and a Cash Income Option which allows investors to receive a quarterly cash income from the sale of shares. We also offer ISA/PEP transfer and share selling facilities. Further details of all these ways of investing in Personal Assets (which offer investors a way of buying or selling shares usually within the bid/offer spread). In addition, we are working on a Self-Invested Personal Pension ("SIPP"), which we hope will be available to investors during the current year.
Investment trusts have long suffered from high and volatile discounts to net asset value ("NAV"). Sometimes, too, the shares of individual investment trusts may sell temporarily at a significant premium to NAV. This can put those investing regularly through investment plans at a disadvantage, because they may find themselves buying shares at a sizeable premium which almost certainly will not be sustained and which will therefore have an adverse effect on the return from their investment.
Because of the disadvantages to shareholders of such discount and premium fluctuations, the Board's policy is to ensure that the shares of Personal Assets always trade at close to NAV.
Each year we seek authority from shareholders to allot new shares, to buy back for cancellation up to 14.99% of our share capital, and to hold shares in Treasury for re-sale. If need be, we will ask shareholders to renew this authority at other times during the year.
