"Thank you for your recent comments on high income investing and interesting leads to be followed up.

"A point that may be worth underlining is that in (the event of?) a deflationary or stagnant economic environment in 'G7' economies, revenue growth may be hard to come by and management of the cost matrix could be challenging for many companies - resulting in strain on the dividend cover and placing ratios that currently look attractive at risk on a medium or long view.

"My personal response to this risk is always to concentrate on companies operating in markets that allow for top line growth. I expect this matches with your own preference (the whole basis of 'Fullermoney Themes', no?) but departs in so far as my economic expectations for 'The West' are probably somewhat bleaker than yours.

"Anyway, cutting to the point, I have been investing for a while in a UK listed investment trust which provides exposure to emerging market Utility and Infrastructure sectors, offers a decent yield (for EM equity exposure) of about 3.5% and trades at a nice discount. I have had no direct contact with the management, but the company's reports seem sensible and performance has been satisfactory.

"Perhaps this may be of interest to the collective - or someone may have had more opportunity to meet/ assess the team?

"The web link is: http://www.uem.bm/uemu/frame.htm"

David Fuller's view Thank you for this thoughtful and analytical email, and for mentioning a fund which is likely to be of interest to the Collective.

Your points about stagnant economic activity being a strain on dividend cover and the importance of focussing on companies operating in markets which allow for top line growth are fully in line with Fullermoney's views.

When investing within the OECD region, we have a strong preference for companies leveraged to the global economy, not least Asia. The West's credit crisis is easily worse than anything I have seen before so there are no grounds for being sanguine about the outcome. However, steps taken by companies to shore up their balance sheets are impressive and the deleveraging trend is positive for the longer term. We should not lose sight of this amidst the understandable angst.

Well done for your shrewd investment in the Utilico Emerging Markets Utilities Fund (UEM LN) (weekly & daily). This is a conservative play in progressing markets and has a reasonable yield as you point out. I like the orderly staircase upward trend, best seen on the weekly chart above. After eight consecutive weeks to the upside we can presumable expect another sideways step before long.

Utilico has a good website to help us with our respective due diligence. Subscribers may wish to click on the Monthly Factsheet and note the global diversity. The fees are significant, as you can also see but not unreasonable as this fund is obviously not a closet index tracker. Investors also have the option of cherry picking among top-10 holdings. Eoin mentioned AES Tiete SA favourably recently. UEM currently trades at a 10% discount to NAV.