Structure
Every split capital trust will have at least two classes of share:
In order of (typical) priority and increasing risk
- Zero Dividend Preference shares - no dividends, only capital growth at a pre-established redemption price (assuming sufficient assets)
- Income shares - entitled to most (or all) of the income generated from the assets of a trust until the wind-up date, with some capital protection
- Annuity Income shares - very high and rising yield, but virtually no capital protection
- Ordinary Income shares (aka Income & Residual Capital shares) - a high income and a share of the remaining assets of the trust after prior ranking shares
- Capital shares - entitled most (or all) of the remaining assets after prior ranking share classes have been paid; very high risk
The type of share invested in is ranked in a predetermined order of priority, which becomes important when the trust reaches its wind-up date. If the split has acquired any debt, debentures or loan stock, then this is paid out first, before any shareholders. Next in line to be repaid are Zero Dividend Preference shares, followed by any Income shares and then Capital. Although this order of priority is the most common way shares are paid out at the wind-up date, it may alter slightly from trust to trust.
Splits may also issue Packaged Units combining certain classes of share, usually reflecting the share classes in the trust usually in the same ratio. This makes them essentially the same investment as an ordinary share in a conventional Investment Trust.
Read more about this topic: Split Capital Investment Trust
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, “Be tolerant—even of evil.” Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth’s criminals, “I disagree that it’s all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion.” Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)