Is it the end of the Listed Investment Company?

Interested to hear people's thoughts on the long term prospects of listed investment companies should Labor win government and enact their policy on franking credit refunds.

There seems to be a number of pundits stating most LICs will be converted to listed investment trusts to circumvent Labor's proposal. However, if this is the case, I think there could be an exodus of funds from closed investment vehicles.

A primary benefit to LICs, as often quoted by their supporters, is the ability to stream dividends throughout market cycles. The movement to a trust structure would remove this benefit, given the fund would be required to distribute all net income.

Seemingly, the only remaining benefit will be the stable capital pool which benefits the fund manager (and the investor sometimes*).

With the continual dominance of ETFs, Active ETFs and other open type funds, will this signal the downfall of closed funds? There seems to be an ever increasing discount to NAV for most LICs on the market.

Interested to hear people's thoughts... Wilson Asset Management are very vocal about their opposition to the proposal, which is not surprising.