The fund’s half-year report released today highlighted that its holdings dropped in value from £235 million in September to £157m by 31 March this year.

A NAV total return of 7.9% for the first quarter was turned into a 30.1% first-half decline after the outbreak of the virus, compared with a 22% fall in NAV for the FTSE All-Share.

Aberdeen Standard Investments said that since late February the postponement or outright cancellation of dividends that had already been declared has become commonplace and this reduced the income we had expected to receive in March.

Dividend income in the six months was £4.724m compared to £5.016m last year, a reduction of 5.8%. Total income for the period was £4.739m compared to £5.212m, a fall of 9.1%.

Management fees and administrative expenses charged to revenue were down 5.7% at £413k compared to £438k in 2019. After interest costs and tax, net earnings were down 10.8% to £4.087m and the revenue per ordinary share was 8.35p compared to 9.43p in 2019.

Richard Burns, the fund’s chairman, said: “Britain today is two months into what the Bank of England has forecast to be the deepest recession since the early 18th century. Few other countries have statistical records as long as this, but for all 2020 is clearly going to be a very poor year economically.

“The next few months will bring an abundance of terrible corporate news. As yet, we cannot tell when the recovery will begin to show itself or how vigorous it will be, but the government has disclosed an outline of its plans for a relaxation of the lockdown and some of the businesses which have had to close since March will be restarting operations shortly.”

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