Saints hikes divi

The Scottish American investment trust (Saints), now under the control of Baillie Gifford's Patrick Edwardson, has raised its dividend by more than 6%.

The £370 million trust, whose mandate passed from First State to Baillie Gifford at the beginning of 2004 after a period of poor performance, this morning reported results in line with the market.

Over the course of 2004, with its debentures valued at the market price rather than the lower book value and including reorganisation costs of 0.64% points, the trust's NAV (net asset value) rose 11.3%. This matched the gain in the trust's new benchmark, which is 70% the FTSE All Share and 30% the FTSE World ex-UK index.

The total dividend payout, which had been neglected in recent years, is now fully covered by earnings and has been increased by 6.2% to 6p, with the final dividend rising to 1.59p from 1.42p.

'While economic growth is unlikely to be as rapid this year as last year, the managers are confident that profits and dividends will rise faster than inflation,' said chairman Brian Ivory.

Saints shares are down 0.25p at 177.5p. At last night's close they stood on a 16% discount to NAV, in line with their average over the past 12 months and compared with an average 9% discount among trusts in the Global Growth & Income sector.