New Measures Enhance Company’s Financial Strength and Increase Its Ability to Serve Fund Shareholders

U.S. Global Investors (Nasdaq: GROW), a registered investment adviser specializing in natural resources and emerging markets, announces that shareholders of the mutual funds managed by the company have approved all of the proposals raised at recent shareholder meetings.

Among the changes, fund shareholders voted in favor of combining two mutual fund trusts into a single trust, creating a new distribution plan aimed at growing assets under management, updating management fees on several funds, and adding performance incentives for the nine equity funds managed by the company.

The changes resulting from the successful proxy solicitation took effect on October 1.

“This is the third evolutionary event in my time at U.S. Global – the first was when I bought controlling interest in the company and the second was when I became chief investment officer,” says Frank Holmes, CEO and CIO. “With this proxy, the fund shareholders have endorsed changes that better align fees with fund performance and our investment culture. It will also give us the cash flow to grow, to acquire valuable technology and hire the best intellectual capital.

“In these challenging markets, it’s important to point out that we have no debt whereas many investment banks are leveraged 20 to 1 and other asset managers on average have 40 percent of their capital as debt,” Mr. Holmes says. “We are in a strong financial position to weather this storm, even though in the past quarter we will see significant expenses as a result of the one-time costs of merging the trusts and other aspects of the proxy solicitation.”

The performance proposal approved by fund shareholders calls for U.S. Global to receive an additional 0.25 percent in compensation for each equity fund that surpasses its benchmark by 5 percent or more over the previous 12 months. If a U.S. Global equity fund lags its benchmark by 5 percent or more over the prior 12 months, the company would forfeit 0.25 percent in management fees.

The consolidation of two investment trusts into one trust will cut costs for the funds by removing a number of duplicative services. Among other factors, two boards of trustees will be combined into a single board and the company will significantly reduce the number of prospectuses, semiannual reports and annual reports that must be printed and mailed each year.

Under the new distribution plan, U.S.