As a split-level trust, when M&G’s Equity Investment Trust came to the end of its natural life, one of the options that shareholders were given was to roll-over their holdings into M&G’s last remaining split-level trust (MGHP).

Now, I’m a long-standing shareholder of MGHP and as such, at the end of August 2008 the trust paid a special dividend, in addition to its normal payouts, of 0.6p per share. This was the result of a similar and successful VAT rebate claim that you are referring to … see:

http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=20080722150433P...

As for reasons behind such VAT rebate claims by ITs – see this Daily Telegraph article of June 2007 …

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/2811273/Investm...

Those ITs who have already made successful VAT rebate claims have either (like M&G) paid them out to shareholders in the form of special dividends or have transferred them to balance sheet capital / revenue reserves.

So, in answer to your question of what the likelihood of success will be – the answer is most definitely YES, but god knows when you are going to get it and precisely how much it will be.