THE MANAGER of Baillie Gifford’s £1.4 billion Monks Investment Trust has said the vehicle’s strong performance in the past year vindicates the investment decisions he took when inheriting the fund two years ago.
In the 12 months to the end of April the trust, whose global mandate sees it invest in names such as Amazon, Ryanair and Samsung Electronics, made a net asset value total return of 40 per cent, outperforming the FTSE World Index by nine percentage points. Its shares were trading at a discount of 0.6 per cent.
When current manager Charles Plowden took over the trust from fellow Baillie Gifford manager Gerald Smith in March 2015 the trust was just coming to the end of a year in which it underperformed the benchmark by five percentage points and traded at a discount of just under nine per cent.
While trust chairman James Ferguson said that the weakness of sterling in the last year had benefited the trust, he added that most of its outperformance was down to Mr Plowden revamping the portfolio to invest only in growth stocks.
Mr Plowden, who noted that two years is too short a time horizon to judge performance on, said the result were nevertheless “a more than satisfactory outcome”.
Over the year 29 of the fund’s holdings grew by more than 50 per cent, with Amazon, Royal Caribbean Cruises and Naspers contributing the most to overall returns.
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