GUY ANDERSON: My name is Guy Anderson,
and I'm a portfolio manager in the International Equity
group at JP Morgan I have responsibility
for looking after the UK Mid and Small Cap team.
And alongside my co-manager, Anthony Lynch,
I manage the Mercantile Investment Trust.
I've been managing the Mercantile
since I joined the firm in 2012 and have over 20 years
experience in the industry.
The Mercantile Investment Trust was founded in 1884.
The objective of the investment trust
is to deliver long-term capital growth
by investing in a diversified portfolio
of UK-listed mid and small-cap companies.
That is to say, those are the companies
that sit outside of the FTSE 100, the index of the largest
100 companies in the UK.
The Mercantile Investment Trust is
looking to deliver long-term capital growth
by investing in a diversified portfolio
of UK-listed mid and small-cap companies.
That is to say, we focus on those companies
that sit outside of the FTSE 100, the index of largest
companies in the UK.
We believe that smaller companies have the potential
to grow at a higher rate than larger companies
and thus deliver superior returns over the long term,
and that is why we are looking to build
a portfolio of companies that we think will be
tomorrow's UK market leaders.
Mercantile provides investors with access
to an actively-managed portfolio of UK-listed mid and small-cap
stocks.
This way, it provides access to what
we think of as the most exciting part of the UK market,
those companies that are able to grow and deliver
superior returns over the long term, and crucially,
having that actively managed portfolio
means that we can hand-select those companies for inclusion
into the portfolio and thus have the potential
to beat the underlying market over the long term.
In addition, an investment trust is exactly the right structure
for this strategy, as it provides permanent capital
and thus allows us, the manager, to make
genuinely long-term investment decisions, looking
for those companies that will deliver the best returns
over the next five or 10 years.