Anderson, manager of the house’s flagship £2billion Scottish Mortgage investment trust, said financiers “need to examine our consciences” over events which ended with both banks requiring multi-billion-pound Government bail-outs to recover from the excesses of previous years.
He said: “I look back with horror. I think the Scottish establishment, whether it be the financial sector, whether it be fund managers or more broadly defined, did an appalling job with Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Scotland.”
His words are particularly striking because Anderson is chief investment officer and one of the 32 controlling partners of a fund house that is widely regarded as a leading light in the Edinburgh financial establishment, managing £52bn on behalf of its clients.
Scottish Mortgage’s only banking investment is Spain’s Banco Santander, owner of Abbey in the UK.
Anderson said: “It is not because we think either Britain or Spain have great economies at the moment.”
Rather, he said, Santander “behaves responsibly”. Santander bought Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley after both institutions suffered during the financial crisis.
Anderson dismissed the chances of serious banking industry reform in the UK in the near-term.
“It seems to me that the entire British establishment is in hock to the investment banks and Goldman Sachs in particular and there will be no serious change until that goes away.”
He warned that the future performance of banks is highly reliant on how regulators treat them.
A survey by the Association of Investment Companies of managers that run more than £17.3bn of investment trust assets found that just 12% expect financials to be the best-performing sector next year. This is half the 24% who think resources including oil, will do best.
Katherine Garrett-Cox, chief executive of the £2.7bn Dundee-based Alliance Trust, is among those cautious about the sector.
“Overall, we remain underweight on financials, although we are beginning to re-enter the sector on a selective basis.”
She added: “Global equities remain our preferred asset class for 2010 and beyond. However, we do think that certain credit markets remain relatively attractive from a yield perspective.”
Some 74% of investment trust managers think
markets will rise in 2010 and 50% anticipate equities will be the best-performing asset class but 28% are tipping gold.
