Tender offer
An offer made by a company to all shareholders to buy all or part of their holding in that security.
Total assets
The total value of all assets held, less current liabilities (short term loans used for investment purposes are not deducted), before deducting prior charges, including listed investments at their fair value price and unlisted investments at directors’ valuation. Income for the current financial year is included. Revenue taken to reserves for the prior financial year is included in the total assets .
Total Expense Ratio (TER)
A Total Expense Ratio (TER) represents the drag on performance caused by all annual operating costs (including administration, trustee and audit fees), not just the basic annual management charge.
There are many different definitions of TER, but those shown on this website have been calculated by Lipper, a Thomson Reuters Company. For more information regarding TERs please see About company profile pages.
Total return performance
Performance data can be calculated with income reinvested, this is defined as total return meaning that any income received through dividends is reinvested into the shares of the company on the day the shares where quoted ex dividend i.e. the day the dividends were declared and not the day they are paid. The total return will then be the gain (or loss) in the value of the shares held at the start of the period divided by the value of the enlarged holding at the end of the period.
Whether to look at capital performance only or total return performance is an issue to consider. For capital only performance, the performance of high yielding funds will be understated and low yielding funds will be overstated when a comparison between the two is made. Total return performance is somewhat artificial but a measure that allows a performance comparison undistorted by the level of yield on the investment. Total return figures can be worked out on share price - in which case it is assumed that new shares are bought at the market price, or at NAV, in which case new shares are assumed to have been acquired at NAV. In practice investors are unlikely to reinvest the exact amount of their dividend back into a company as soon as they receive it (and certainly not on the ex dividend date as they will not have received it by then), even if they did there would be costs of reinvestment involved. Total return performance is not therefore a return that shareholders actually experience but is a valuable tool to measure relative performance against an index or other funds without distortions from differing yield levels.
See share price total return performance or NAV total return performance.
Trade
A deal made on the London Stock Exchange, also referred to as a 'bargain'
Treasury shares
Companies are able to buy back their own shares to hold them “in treasury” (“treasury shares”) for future disposal (see share buy-backs).
This allows companies flexibility to manage their capital structures – i.e. rather than cancel shares which they have bought in through a share buy-back, they are able to hold these shares and then resell the treasury shares to the market. This is also an alternative to other types of transactions such as rights issues and placings of shares which often involve significant underwriting costs.
Companies taking advantage of the treasury share regulation are not be able to hold 'in treasury' more than 10% of the aggregate nominal value of the issued share capital of the company. If the maximum is exceeded the company must dispose of or cancel the excess shares within twelve months.
Details of shares held in treasury can be found on each companies profile page on this website. The number of shares in treasury are not included in the number of ordinary shares.
