We believe this is the first paper to analyse ownership of Investment Company (IC) sectors by type of investor. It has been written in collaboration with Argus Vickers.
ICs were originally created in the 19th century as a vehicle for wealthy private investors and those who wanted to utilise the skills of a specialist in the asset class.
They increasingly fell out of favour in the middle of the 20th century as retail investors flocked to mutual funds, institutions took specialisation in-house and ICs came to be viewed as old-fashioned with weak governance.
ICs are back in fashion, partly following recent difficulties relating to illiquidity and suspension of dealing by some mutual funds.
All ICs offer investors the benefit of pooling risk and diversification for a small investment, whilst “alternatives” can have additional advantages, such as creating liquidity in illiquid assets and providing exposure to asset classes investors wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.
Strangely, these attributes were precisely why investors clubbed together in the 19th century to form investment trusts, as ICs used to be called. In fact, you could say we are Right back where we started from[1].
At the end of 2019, the combined market capitalisation of all ICs was more than £170bn.
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