By Michael Kokalari CFA, chief economist, and Thai Thi Viet Trinh, senior economist.

In this episode, our director of content, investment companies Milosz Papst talks about Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust. This is a timely podcast as the trust is once again under fire from US-based activist hedge fund Saba Capital Management. Shareholders voted decisively against Saba’s proposals in February 2025 and Edinburgh Worldwide’s board is urging shareholders to do so again. This time round, Saba has amassed a larger stake in the trust and is proposing to replace Edinburgh Worldwide’s board with three of its own representative but has given no indication about the trust’s future strategy. Timing is tight as the general meeting is scheduled for 12:00 noon on 20 January 2026. The cut-off for submitting votes is 12:00 noon on Saturday 17 January 2026 but for platforms, the date may be as soon as 12 January 2026.

Papst provides a brief introduction to Edinburgh Worldwide before highlighting how the board has proactively addressed a period of poor performance. This included enhancing the investment team and meaningful improvements in portfolio construction and execution, such as fewer holdings and stricter measures to address underperforming investments. The portfolio was reshaped to include more profitable, cash-generative companies and to have greater sector diversification. These efforts have led to notably better performance.

Attention then returns to the pressing issue of Saba. Edinburgh Worldwide’s board strongly urges all of its shareholders, no matter how large or how small, to vote against Saba’s proposal to take control of the trust in a move that would favour Saba over the trust’s existing shareholders. Saba has not stated its intentions, beyond replacing the board, and has failed to engage, including a lack of response to a list of questions in Edinburgh Worldwide’s open letter on 30 December 2025.

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About Uncovering Trusts: Uncovering Trusts is a podcast run by Edison analysts, which is released every two weeks. Subscribe to hear analyst interviews on how investment trusts maximise returns while managing risks for investors.

In this episode, our director of content, investment trusts Milosz Papst talks about Murray International. This is our first podcast focusing on this large, well-established fund, so he starts by providing an introduction to the company, before highlighting how it differs from its peers in the AIC Global Equity Income sector. Murray International has a notable below-market weight in the US and a meaningful allocation to emerging markets. Discussion then moves onto the investment process, which features Aberdeen’s focus on quality and value, and input from its regional investment teams. He then provides more information about the portfolio, which is broadly diversified by geography and sector. To bring some more colour, he gives some examples of recent transactions, where portfolio activity has been higher than average as Murray International’s managers have found increased opportunities in a volatile market. Attention then turns to the trust’s performance and the change in the company’s reference measure to what is a more relevant MSCI ACWI High Dividend Yield Index given Murray International’s emphasis on income and dividend growth. Papst then highlights the trust’s competitive fee structure and its valuation, before wrapping up with summary of the key takeaways of the Murray International story.

Listen on your preferred podcast player below:

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• Zencastr

About Uncovering Trusts: Uncovering Trusts is a podcast run by Edison analysts, which is released every two weeks. Subscribe to hear analyst interviews on how investment trusts maximise returns while managing risks for investors.

In this interview, Grant Foley, group CFO and COO of Braemar, delivers an investor update on the company’s strategic transformation from traditional ship broking to a diversified maritime services platform. He addresses the challenging H1 results, which saw revenues decline 16% amid rate pressures, while highlighting the resilience demonstrated by the securities division’s 9% growth. Foley outlines Braemar’s comprehensive 2030 strategic framework targeting £200m in revenues, a 15% operating margin and significant expansion of the regulated securities business, while addressing investor questions about market fragmentation and consolidation opportunities.

Braemar operates as a global maritime intermediary with 19 offices in 13 countries, facilitating cargo movement across all vessel types including tankers, specialised tankers, dry cargo and offshore vessels, alongside a substantial sale and purchase division. The company has strategically diversified beyond core ship broking into regulated securities products within the energy space. With the recent launch of a UK Organised Trading Facility (OTF) and regulatory expansion into Europe and Dubai planned for 2026, Braemar is positioned to capture value from the highly fragmented ship broking market. Led by experienced management focused on operational excellence, new geography expansion, strategic hiring and targeted M&A, Braemar offers investors diversified exposure to global trade flows with multiple growth vectors across both traditional and emerging maritime service lines.

In this interview, Martin Connaghan, who along with Samantha Fitzpatrick manages Murray International Trust (MYI), provides an introduction to the fund, including how it is differentiated versus its peers. He explains how stocks are selected within the broad global remit and how much consideration is given to the investment backdrop as the strategy is bottom-up focused. Connaghan then discusses the portfolio, including examples of recent transactions, along with the trust’s performance before reiterating the key messages about Murray International.

Murray International Trust aims to achieve an above-average dividend yield with long-term growth in dividends and capital ahead of inflation, by investing principally in global equities. Its performance is referenced against the MSCI ACWI High Dividend Yield Index.

Edison’s investment companies team recently published a review of The Diverse Income Trust. Managers Gervais Williams and Martin Turner believe that income stocks are set to become market leaders due to their steady cash returns to shareholders in an environment of nationalism and volatile asset prices. The UK looks particularly attractive as it has been devalued by persistent outflows since Brexit and within this market many small-cap equity income stocks are trading on what the managers say are ‘absurdly low valuations’. The Diverse Income Trust is a unique proposition with an income and capital growth strategy spread across the market cap spectrum. Since the trust was launched in April 2011, it has an unbroken record of higher annual dividends and has outperformed all but one of its 17 peers in the AIC UK Equity Income sector, along with its comparator indices by a wide margin.