AGF Management Ltd. would seriously consider converting to an income trust, but rival IGM Financial Inc. doesn’t foresee a conversion in its immediate future.

Speaking at Scotia Capital’s financial services conference today, AGF’s president and chief executive, Blake Goldring, said he expects to see the ongoing “trustification” of corporate Canada, as long as there remain tax advantages for the structure compared with the traditional corporate structure.

Goldring noted that the traditional structure has served AGF well over the past 50 years, but that it would have to give “serious consideration” to anything that would enhance shareholder value.

That said, Goldring stressed that his management team’s first priority is completing the sale of its Unisen division to Citigroup, and fixing its retail mutual fund sales problems. He ranked both of these tasks ahead of a trust conversion on his to-do list.

Speaking at the same conference, IGM executives, Murray Taylor and Charlie Sims, co-presidents and CEOs, downplayed their interest in a trust conversion, saying that they have no immediate plans to go that route; and that they’ll have to do more work on it before it gets serious consideration.

The topic is a particularly hot one as rival fund company CI Fund Management Inc. recently announced its plan to convert to a trust, as did brokerage firm GMP Capital Corp. And, the federal government recently issued a concept paper on the trust market, as it grapples with the possibility of tax leakage and increased economic inefficiencies that may be created by the vehicle.