Using a total return investment philosophy, BlackRock Income & Growth aims to provide growth in capital and income over the long term by investing in a portfolio of principally UK-listed equities. The managers set out their investment philosophy clearly in mid2013, and have followed the same process continuously since then. Whilst there has been some turnover in the “lead-manager” position, there has been continuity in the approach of the 13 managers contributing to the process. The team operate with a relative concentrated portfolio, currently 46 names with slightly higher turnover than average, reflecting the team’s rigid active investment process and price targets. Currently, the portfolio is biased towards high-quality stocks that are delivering strong free cash flow via sustainable, organic means. In addition, 20% of the portfolio is invested in ‘growth’ names, and 10% in what the team view as ‘turnarounds’. Whilst BRIG itself is relatively small with total assets of £55m, the mangers also run the £400m open-ended BlackRock UK Income Fund. BRIG’s key differentiating factors relative to the OEIC is the gearing facility, and an extended ability to buy small caps. Having formally ratified the investment process in 2013, the team got off to a very strong start outperforming the benchmark by a considerable margin over the first couple of years. In 2016 they gave back some of this performance thanks to their underweight in miners, but during 2017 have broadly kept up with the benchmark. At the time of writing, the shares yield 3.4%, which is below the average of the peer group. However, the board have built up revenue reserves of 1x the dividend, which potentially puts the trust in a good position given the ambition to consistently grow the dividend over time. The team have grown the distribution of their open-ended fund ahead of inflation for over 30 consecutive years now. The board have run an active discount control mechanism since 2013, which has resulted in relatively low discount volatility. As such, the trust typically trades close to NAV, although currently stands on a discount of 5%.