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Equities investor The Scottish Investment Trust bumped up its annual dividend, despite posting a negative performance for the year.
The company increased its annual payout by 1.8% to 23.2p per share, which it said market the 37th consecutive year of regular dividend increases.
Its net asset value per share total return for the year through October was negative 10.6%.
The Scottish Investment Trust said it did not have a formal benchmark. But by way of comparison it had underperformed a 5.0% rise on the MSCI All Country World Index, but outperformed a 20.6% fall on the UK-based MSCI UK All Cap Index.
'This leaves us strongly ahead of the UK comparator and well behind the global index,' it said.
'Global markets continued this year to be dominated by a momentum style of investing which seemingly pays scant regard to valuation, and is an anathema to our value-focused style of investing.'
Looking ahead, the company noted that recent Covid-19 vaccine news had been well received by investors.
'Clearly there will be challenges to come, not least managing the current wave of Covid, but we believe the reaction to the vaccine newsflow demonstrates the potential for recovery in beaten down and overlooked areas should the good news be sustained,' chairman James Will said.
Will added that the company still didn't expect Brexit to have a material adverse impact on its business model or operations.