Toronto-based BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. is calling a meeting of unitholders of several closed-end mutual funds to consider proposals to reorganize them as open-end funds, the company announced Wednesday.
The affected funds are: Global Water Solutions Fund, Global Alpha Worldwide Growth Fund, DoubleLine Income Solutions Trust and PineBridge Investment Grade Preferred Securities Fund.
With the changes, the company aims to, firstly, provide “value to unitholders by narrowing the trading price and net asset value discount,” and secondly, provide “better liquidity to unitholders, by converting the funds into open-end daily redeemable mutual funds, and additionally in the case of the DoubleLine Fund and the PineBridge Fund, to seek economies of scale by merging them into a larger fund.”
Changes are also being proposed to certain investment objectives, strategies and restrictions, including to conform to current industry practice, the asset manager says in a news release.
Global Water Fund will change its name to BMO Global Water Solutions TACTIC Fund and will no longer hedge its portfolio back to Canadian dollars. Global Alpha Fund will change its name to BMO Global Growth TACTIC Fund and will expand its investment universe by enabling investment in equity securities of emerging market companies.
DoubleLine Fund and PineBridge Fund will merge, with the continuing fund to follow the investment mandate of the PineBridge Fund. It will be renamed BMO PineBridge Preferred Securities TACTIC Fund. The fund will be able to use specified derivatives, including for the purpose of obtaining leveraged exposure to a particular investment, and will not pay regular distributions.
A special meeting of unitholders has been called and will be held on or about Nov. 12, to consider and vote on the proposed changes. The fund reorganizations are subject to regulatory approval.