When Alex Darwall exited Jupiter in 2019, he took with him an investment trust which was £2bn in size.

Now, having underperformed over three and five years, its market cap is £552mn and the discount is more than 10 per cent.

That has prompted the trust’s chairman Matthew Dobbs, himself a former investment trust manager at Schroders, to express his “disappointment” with the performance of the trust, but the board has agreed to stick with Darwall for now. 

The board’s rationale for this is that the manager has a “high conviction” approach which they believe will be vindicated in time. 

On a five year view, the trust has returned just 5 per cent, while the AIC Europe sector has returned 44 per cent. 

Despite Darwall’s profile, the trust was only owned by two of the allocators we cover coming into 2023, and as we get to the end of 2024, only one of those remains. 

The allocator holding out is Darius McDermott who advises on the VT Chelsea Range of multi-manager funds.

He told Asset Allocator: “He had a good 2023 and was the best performer in the trust sector, though he lagged against some of the open-ended funds we would compare him against. We are meeting him in a couple of weeks and are keeping the situation under review until then.” 

Allocators will also note the potential for corporate activity here, as activist investors have appeared on the share register, actions which prompted a cut in Darwall’s fee last year. 

Events around this trust may prove to be very interesting over the coming year.