City grandee Lord Rothschild called it right last year when he took his investment trust RIT Capital Partners back into shares in a big way.
Between September and December it upped its equity allocation from 51% to 61% of funds. As a result the trust has ridden the crest of this year’s equity wave with its net asset value surging 9.9% to an all-time of 1309p a share by 22 February. That took the overall assets above £2 billion for the first time.
Lord Rothschild said: “These results have been achieved through the most perilous financial era of a lifetime. We have not abandoned the overall caution which the world economy still demands but our focus has shifted more towards growth. To reflect our increasing confidence in markets we have reduced our defensive hedges”. He added that RIT was now particularly targeting the improving US economy. He announced a huge dividend hike, paying 28p a share this year against just 4p last year.
