An investment trust’s board can choose to replace the underperforming fund manager running its portfolio, but in practice it doesn’t happen all that often. This makes the proceedings at Murray Income (MUT) interesting to observe.
The trust used to be managed by Aberdeen. Its performance has been lagging peers, particularly over the past five years, and towards the end of 2025 the board conducted a strategic review and decided to hire Artemis instead. The new managers are Adrian Frost, Andy Marsh and Nick Shenton, who are also responsible for the fund house’s flagship UK fund, the £5.5bn Artemis Income (GB00B2PLJH12) portfolio.
The trio took charge at the beginning of March, and have just revealed how they have repositioned the trust. They certainly haven’t opted for a light touch: the portfolio looks transformed, and indeed very similar to that of Artemis Income.
Read more from Investors’ Chronicle
From a sector perspective, exposure to industrials has been slashed in favour of financials, which now account for a third of the portfolio, up from about 15 per cent previously. Looking at individual stocks, the five biggest holdings in February were: AstraZeneca (AZN), National Grid (NG.), Unilever (ULVR), TotalEnergies (FR:TTE) and Relx (REL). One month later, under the new managers, the positions are: Tesco (TSCO), GSK (GSK), Lloyds (LLOY), NatWest (NWG) and Aviva (AV.). Relx and AstraZeneca still feature in the top 20, but further down.
Artemis says around 75 per cent of the portfolio has changed, and that it has also increased the gearing a little, from 5.3 per cent as at the end of February to 7 per cent as at the end of March. There was also a rise in concentration, although nothing too dramatic – the top 20 now account for 72 per cent of the total, up from 62 per cent.
Is this a new dawn for the struggling trust? Artemis’ record certainly looks better; in the five years to April 2026, Artemis Income returned about 63 per cent, against 28 per cent for Murray Income. This is still below the FTSE All-Share’s 71 per cent, with Artemis Income underperforming since the start of 2026.
The Artemis managers say they are style agnostic. The trust’s objective remains to combine income and capital growth, with the managers looking for “companies [they] believe can consistently generate high levels of cash from their operations, allowing them to pay reliable dividends”. However, in practice Artemis Income tends to have a tilt towards value stocks, against Aberdeen’s more ‘quality’ focused approach.
Investors’ Chronicle’s stockpickers are slightly more positive on the Artemis portfolio. Our companies team covers 19 of the 20 top holdings, and rates 12 as ‘buy’. By comparison, they cover 17 of the 20 top holdings as of a month ago (the Aberdeen portfolio included a few overseas stocks), nine of which were last rated as ‘buy’.
If you think the new managers can turn performance around, the trust looks attractive at the moment. Compared to investing directly into the open-ended income fund, you can buy the trust at an 8.5 per cent discount to net asset value as at 6 April. This is a bigger discount than the average of 4.5 per cent across the Association of Investment Companies’ UK equity income sector, and if the new managers can prove themselves, it should start narrowing.