A philosophy for growth

The UK Alpha Trust operates with a clear investment philosophy, at the heart of which lies freedom: the freedom to invest in any sector, in any size of company and in any UK stock market in pursuit of strong capital growth.

At the same time, we have a rigorous and disciplined stock selection process that helps us identify the right companies
for us to invest in.

Ideally, you should invest in the UK Alpha Trust as part of a wider portfolio of balanced investments.

Leadership

It’s an approach that has been pioneered by Richard Penny, one of Legal & General’s senior fund managers, since the UK Alpha Trust was launched in 2005.

Richard has managed the fund since its beginning. He first joined Legal & General in 2002, following five years as a fund manager at M&G and four years at Scottish Amicable.

Richard has a MEng in Engineering and Economics from Oxford University and he is a fully qualified member of the UK Society of Investment Professionals.

Insight

As one of the largest investors in the UK stock market and the largest shareholder in many companies, Legal & General enjoys an outstanding overview of the market.

We’re also able to gather valuable insights face to face. Boardroom doors open to our fund managers, whether in blue chip companies from the FTSE 100 or dynamic start-ups from AIM.

Every year, they meet around 500 companies, large and small, to talk to their directors and gain an overview of their strategy and plans – insights that they then use to inform each of our investment decisions.

We’re looking for companies that we believe can offer either rapid growth potential or unrealised value.

And we focus UK Alpha Trust investments into a portfolio of typically 25 to 30 stocks that we believe offer outstanding investment opportunities. This means the UK Alpha Trust may present more risk to your investment than some of our traditional funds.

 

Rapid growth

Driving the performance of the UK Alpha Trust are our investments in companies that we believe offer rapid growth potential.

Our strategy is to look for companies that are aggressively growing sales and profits by 15% or more – growth that feeds through to share price performance.

We seek out entrepreneurial companies that are developing new products or operating in new markets – but only those that have the potential to mature into significantly larger businesses over three to five years.

 

Unrealised value

To help balance out the fund’s risk profile, the UK Alpha Trust also invests in companies that we believe offer valuable investment opportunities that the market overlooks and undervalues.

We look for profitable businesses, often large companies, that are well managed and with stable product lines, but which are experiencing changes that we believe will restore value to their shares – anything from a management change to a restructuring or new product development.