Herald Investment Trust

Herald Investment Trust plc (LSE: HRI) is a large United Kingdom-based investment trust focused predominantly on holdings of quoted small- and mid-cap technology, communications and media companies. Established in February 1994, the company is listed on the London Stock Exchange. The fund is managed under the auspices of Herald Investment Management and its chairman is Julian Cazalet.

References

Investment trust

An investment trust is a form of collective investment found mostly in the United Kingdom. Investment trusts are closed-end funds and are constituted as public limited companies. In many respects, the investment trust was the progenitor of the investment company in the U.S.

The name is somewhat misleading, given that (according to law) an investment "trust" is not in fact a "trust" in the legal sense at all, but a separate legal person or a company. This matters for the fiduciary duties owed by the trustees and the equitable ownership of the fund's assets.

Organization

Investors' money is pooled together from the sale of a fixed number of shares which a trust issues when it launches. The board will typically delegate responsibility to a professional fund manager to invest in the stocks and shares of a wide range of companies (more than most people could practically invest in themselves). The investment trust often has no employees, only a board of directors comprising only non-executive directors. However in recent years this has started to change, especially with the emergence of both private equity groups and commercial property trusts both of which sometimes use investment trusts as a holding vehicle.