Can you please comment with respect to the impact on the shareholders of this change.
Thanks.
For unit holders they will see little change. A closed-end trust has certain restrictions, such as: at least 80% of its property must consist of a combination of enumerated assets including shares, debt, marketable securities and real property situated in Canada. At least 95% of its income (computed without regard to any distributions) for the year must be derived from those assets, and generally no more than 10% of its holdings can be in any one corporation or debtor. Converting to open end essentially gives it more flexibility, and is more inline with Canadian peers. In theory, it will lower the cost of capital as it should get a slightly higher valuation. With the conversion comes redemption rights, but these are essentially never used as the market price is practically always above any redemption price. So for unit holders, nothing really changes here and it is more of a formality in classification.