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JPMORGAN UK STRATEGIC EQUITY INCOME FUND GETS GO AHEAD TO MERGE WITH JPM EQUITY INCOME FUND

Feb 04, 2008

Following the positive shareholder vote in December to change the name of the JPM UK Strategic Value Fund to the JPM UK Strategic Equity Income Fund, shareholders have again voted positively to the proposed merger of the newly name fund with the JPM UK Equity Income Fund. The proposed merger, which took effect on 1st February 2008, was received favourably by 95% of voting shareholders.

JPMorgan Asset Management (JPMAM) originally wrote to shareholders of the JPM UK Strategic Value Fund in November 2007 proposing the following changes:

• The investment objective will be modified to provide both capital and income.

• The Fund's name will be changed to the JPM UK Strategic Equity Income Fund.

• The frequency of income distributions will be increased to quarterly, from semi-annually.

• The minimum investment for share class ‘A’* will be lowered from £1 million to £3,000.

All the above changes were made effective on 1st January 2008 in order to better reflect the management style and methodology. Other than the change in frequency of distributions, the fund will continue to be managed in the same way.

On 1st February 2008, the JPM UK Equity Income Fund and the newly named UK Strategic Equity Income Fund merged and fees will now be taken from capital rather than income.

The proposed merger of both the UK Equity Income Fund and the UK Strategic Equity Income Fund was a natural progression and part of an ongoing commitment that JPMAM has to always acting in clients’ best interests. Though both funds employed different strategies to achieve their goals, they shared a similar investment philosophy and therefore, in the interest of clients, it made perfect sense to merge the two funds. The UK Strategic Equity Income Fund is 1st quartile over 5 years having returned 102.3%.**

Jasper Berens, Head of UK retail sales at JPMorgan Asset Management said:

 “Our number one priority at JPMAM has always been to look after our clients’ best interests across all areas of our business and as always, we have listened to our client’s needs and responded accordingly. We are proud to have a very strong product offering spanning many sectors and markets from Cautious Total Return to Natural Resources and Europe to Emerging Markets. One area we have been looking at to enhance and bolster is our offering in the UK equity income sector and we feel that our investors will benefit greatly from these changes. JPMAM is a global company with global expertise and resources in many diversified markets and this will only add to an already strong retail offering.”

* ‘A’ shares carry a front-end charge at the time of purchase as well as an annual management fee.
** Source: Morningstar to end January 2008