By MARK HINTON 05/04/2007
This fund employs a ‘mid green’ approach to ethical bond investing and is managed by Sajiv Vaid and Stephen Peirce. It mirrors the Royal London Corporate Bond trust as much as possible, after the application of an ethical EIRIS screen. This filtering system ensures that any issuer of the fund's holdings does not produce more than 10% of its annual turnover from a combination of any of the following:- alcohol, armaments, gambling, tobacco, and pornography.
The universe of investable stocks allowed after the ethical screen is around 95% of that available to the Royal London Corporate Bond trust. The ethical portfolio invests primarily in sterling investment grade bonds but will also invest up to 20% of the portfolio in unrated bonds.
The strength of the fixed interest team at Royal London gives us confidence to award this fund three stars.