Meet The Manager

James Henderson joined Henderson Global Investors in 1984 and has managed Henderson Opportunities Trust since January 2007. Involved with investment trusts throughout his career, James has an aggressive, stock picking investment style which is value driven and he seeks out opportunities among large, medium and small companies. James has also managed the highly successful long-term performance of Lowland Investment Company since 1990.

Fund Manager's Commentary  – April 2012

Whilst the April weather produced record downpours and the European sovereign debt crisis appeared to rear its ugly head again, the UK stock market and the British Pound remained relative havens of tranquillity. This has also happened during a month when the UK officially fell back into recession, with gross domestic product (GDP) falling in two consecutive quarters – albeit by the smallest of margins, which may well be revised away over the coming months. The UK stock market has a very large component of overseas earnings and took the disappointment in its stride. Political risks have risen in France where a left-leaning government seemed a real possibility and has now become reality as François Hollande has now become the first Socialist president since 1988. Spain’s sovereign credit rating was again downgraded by Standard & Poor’s, unemployment approached 25%, and its stock market fell 15% in euro terms. The Dutch government collapsed trying to agree budget cuts to reduce the budget deficit, something that caught the markets by surprise.

We have a number of potential new ideas, and with this in mind we began making some room for them by taking profits in a number of stocks – mostly by reducing our holdings modestly, but retaining a core position. To this end, we reduced Ashtead, Hill & Smith, IP Group, Johnson Services, and Interserve. We did partially re-invest the cash raised in Aveva, software tools for the energy-generation market, and Premier Oil, the internationally diversified oil producer. Our only new investment was in Progressive Media, where we are backing the same management team that did such a good job at Datamonitor a few years ago. Our biggest positive contributor over the month was e2v, which produced a reassuring trading update and the stock rose 19%, whereas our poorest contributor was IQE, which fell by 15% following slightly disappointing industry news.

Net asset value rose by 0.5%, including income, whereas the FTSE 100 Index fell by 0.3% and the FTSE AIM All-Share declined 2.1%.

Gearing fell, for the reasons indicated above, to 13.5%.