While there is always a danger of possibly reading too much in-between the lines, nevertheless there is a fairly insightful article in the latest quarterly edition of the Investment Trusts magazine concerning Aberdeen Asset Management and in particular their previously fraught relationship with both Murray Income and Dunedin Income Growth ITs.

Having inherited the fund management role of these two trusts following the acquisitions of Murray Johnstone and Edinburgh Fund Managers. It seems that both boards of directors of MUT and DIG were apparently not at all impressed with the quality and investment style that was then on offer from AAM. Indeed, they threatened Ann Richards, AAM’s chief investment officer, with a change of mandate if AAM did not quickly get its house in order. Ann Richards is quoted in the article as saying she was absolutely petrified of losing the stewardship of both MUT and DIG and the potential damage it would do to AAM’s then already tarnished image following the group’s central involvement in the split-capital debacle.

Murray Income effectively blackmailed Ann Richards into running the trust with the help of current manager Charles Luke. While Dunedin Income Growth was extremely disgruntled with the quality of the four managers they had foisted upon them in quick succession from 2006. The fifth and current DIG manager Jeremy Whitely having been in charge since November 2009. But even he somewhat guardedly admits that his relationship with the DIG board is not always easy. He is quoted as saying his head was on the block to maintain the trust’s dividend. Adding that it doesn’t always help matters that the portfolio’s above average yield considerations are occasionally something of a straitjacket to contend with.

While Jeremy Whitely most definitely doesn’t say it, I get the impression from the article that he would rather be managing MUT than DIG. On the grounds that the board of MUT has given their manager more license to write revenue generating options resulting in possible opportunities to look a stocks a little bit further down the yield curve than other wise would be the case. Plus MUTs roll-out-roll-in type borrowings are a lot more easy to manage than the sort that DIG has.

It is interesting to note that in these precarious times the FE Trustnet Risk Rating for DIG is a relatively high 120 while for MUT it is 83 - the FTSE 100 representing the benchmark risk of 100. For after all is said and done, these are two income growth ITs that are basically doing the same thing.

For shareholders of Securities Trust of Scotland, there is also an interesting little piece in the Investment Trusts magazine on its new manager Alan Porter. Apparently, when he joined Martin Currie three years ago he claims that he immediately started pushing the board of STS to switch the trust’s UK investment mandate to a global one. Once the decision was taken to go global and he was put in charge in August, he already had is “shopping list” written out and inside a day’s trading he had done 80% of the switch over.

Also I feel worth a mention because it is an investment trust that gets a fair amount of coverage on this board is a profile of RIT Capital Partners and the influence that Jacob Rothschild has had on the trust over the past 30 years. Now aged 75, he states that he is more involved with the running of the trust that he has ever been in the past.

Because I am an extremely nice person, I have scanned the two-page profile of RIT and uploaded it to a Skydrive folder for downloading and reading by such investment trust Fools who feel so inclined …

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=8d182184fa2f8577&Bsrc=EMS...