Dividend machine, still humming
Fidelity European Trust just did the polite-but-important investor thing: it recommended a 6.00p final dividend. Add that to the 3.90p interim payout, and you get 9.90p for the year — an 8.8% step up from 9.10p last year.
For income-focused holders, that’s the sort of boring-in-a-good-way update you actually want. It’s a reminder that this trust is still leaning into its long-running “progressive dividend” habit, now stretched to 14 straight years of annual payout growth.
The merger hangover, but make it efficient
The bigger story hiding in the fine print is the combo with Henderson European Trust, which closed on 29 September 2025. Think of it as two European equity trusts deciding they’d be stronger — and cheaper — as one.
That deal brought a few investor-friendly side effects:
- a larger scale base and better liquidity
- ongoing charges down to 0.73%
- lower tiered management fees going forward
- a small €35m fixed gearing package at a very sleepy 1.57% blended rate
In other words: same investment flavor, less fee leakage. Always a nice trade.
Why you should care
The trust’s portfolio managers are still making the case that European equities look cheap relative to U.S. peers, which is basically the market-version of saying “why pay up for the shiny thing when this one’s on sale?” The year also delivered a revenue return of 11.30p per share, so the dividend hike didn’t come out of nowhere.
Big picture: this is less about fireworks and more about compounding — bigger platform, lower costs, and a dividend stream that keeps inching higher. For income investors, that’s the kind of unsexy progress that can quietly matter a lot.