Mr. Young: Alliance Trust is a closed-end investment trust in the classical UK model. A very important feature is simply that it is a listed company. Incorporated in 1888, its origins date back to 1873 when there was an alliance of three companies involved in land mortgages in the US. It was borrowing money in Dundee and lending it out to homesteaders in Oregon and Oklahoma. That gave us a very strong international perspective right from the word go, and that still persists today. Further, many of the original stockholders’ descendants are still stockholders. That's the way people participate in the portfolio, i.e. by being stockholders. That’s the nature of an investment trust. We also have a sister company called the Second Alliance Trust which came into the fold in 1918. It is managed on the same lines as the Alliance. In recent years we have set up a savings subsidiary, Alliance Trust Savings and that allows us to provide wrappers for the basic investment trusts themselves, which can be added to from a choice of over 1500 other securities. In terms of the objective of the trust, we see ourselves as providing the core investment for the long-term. We find that is how many people tend to use the trust, i.e. they will use it as a core and build a portfolio around it.
TWST: How large is the trust?
Mr. Young: The Alliance is now at £1.4 billion of assets. The two trusts together will be £1.8 billion. Beyond that, client assets in the savings company is another £1 billion.
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