Investment Trust Awards 2013: Best Overseas Smaller Companies Trust for regular savers

The two Asian smaller company trusts both held up well in the year to March 2009 and have made impressive progress every year since. They therefore boast the best returns of all the trusts competing for the best regular savings award, with Aberdeen Asian Smaller Companies in first place.

Hugh Young, who heads the trust's management team, says smaller Asian companies have performed particularly strongly because many are consumer-oriented, so have been well placed to capitalise on Asia's expanding and increasingly affluent middle classes. This trend should have a lot further to run, though it may be more difficult to make money because market valuations have soared.

The team will remain on the alert for emerging companies which investors with a less well-entrenched presence in Asia will find hard to spot. Aberdeen Asian Smaller Companies prides itself in the depth of its locally based research, with over 390 staff. They are headed by a phalanx of Asia-born investment managers who have been in its Singapore office for more than a decade, and country specialist in the likes of Thailand, India, China, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Aberdeen is committed to visiting every company before it invests and twice yearly while it remains in any Aberdeen portfolios. Companies are assessed first and foremost for quality; only if they meet strict criteria on matters such as management, business focus, balance sheet strength and corporate governance is the share price even taken into account. The team's insistence on quality means its portfolios are usually relatively robust in hard times, but can lag a bit when markets are roaring ahead and more cyclical shares come into fashion.

The First State Asia team which manages Scottish Oriental Small Companies is also very quality conscious. It claims its investment style is inherently conservative, focusing on capital preservation as well as capital growth, and it tends to be more cautious about gearing than Aberdeen. It says it has been struggling to find reasonably priced companies to invest in.

The next three contenders are all from F&C, with the managers of the US Smaller companies and European Assets trusts both contributing to the success of F&C Global Smaller Companies.

Runners-up: Scottish Oriental Smaller Companies, F&C US Smaller Companies, F&C Global Smaller Companies, European Assets.