The shareholders of MW Tops have passed all of the resolutions to reconstruct and wind-up the company.

Shareholders’ investments will be transferred into the MW Tops Developed Europe Ucits fund.
 
Cameron McPhail, chairman of MW Tops, says: “The board is pleased that shareholders have backed this proposal, which we believe to be in their best interests. It enables them to participate in the Tops strategy going forward, with the ability to subscribe to, or redeem from, shares on a weekly basis without the added uncertainty of their investment trading at discount or premium to NAV.”

Ronald Paterson, partner at law firm Eversheds, says: “Converting a listed fund into an open ended-investment company regulated under the EU Ucits regime is a recognised way of satisfying the desire of shareholders to regularly trade their shares at net asset value in a product managed by the same manager.

"In order to achieve this, investors are having to accept some changes to the investment policy, including restrictions on the fund's ability to invest in unquoted investments and to borrow  and the Ucits fund will only take short positions synthetically and not directly.  Although the Ucits vehicle can be registered both inside the EU and outside it (for example in Switzerland) there are restrictions on the ability of US investors to follow their investment into the Ucits vehicle.

"Overall this is an interesting example of the extent to which a Ucits fund can be used to replicate other types of fund, although the regulatory and operational implications for the fund manager should not be underestimated.”