OREANDA-NEWS. September 03, 2015. Standard Life UK Smaller Companies Trust (SLS) is managed with the aim of achieving long-term capital growth. Manager Harry Nimmo seeks companies with resilient business models and the potential to deliver sustainable growth.

There have been periods of relative weakness when markets experienced risk-on rallies, but over the long-term the quality biased approach has delivered outperformance. A period of renewed relative strength over the last year has been accompanied by a modest narrowing of the discount.

The current discount to cum-income NAV of 6.7% is above the three-year average of 3.5% and maintenance of the recent marked improvement in relative performance could prompt a narrowing from this level. Underpinning the level of discount is a control policy that includes the potential for regular tender offers for up to 5% of the outstanding shares and share buybacks at discounts more than 10%.