10 private equity trusts to buy

Private equity should be a core component of any portfolio, says Max King. Here are the sector’s top trusts.

City of London Financial District
(Image credit: Getty images)

Most wealth managers and direct investors regard private equity as an optional add-on to a portfolio of listed shares. But Steffen Meister, chairman of Partners Group, argues persuasively that it has become much more than that. Baillie Gifford and other leading fund managers have been allocating funds to private equity for some time now. They note that private companies are floating on the stockmarket later, if at all. So if investors want to capture more of the value created by these firms, they must invest while they are still private. 

Distrust of private-equity valuations, and the consequent slump in the share prices of private-equity trusts as discounts to net asset values (NAV) widened dramatically, led to disillusionment with the sector. But confidence is slowly returning. Asset values have held up or increased, the credibility of those valuations has risen, and holdings have been sold at significant premiums to carrying (book) values. 

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Max King
Investment Writer

Max has an Economics degree from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered accountant. He worked at Investec Asset Management for 12 years, managing multi-asset funds investing in internally and externally managed funds, including investment trusts. This included a fund of investment trusts which grew to £120m+. Max has managed ten investment trusts (winning many awards) and sat on the boards of three trusts – two directorships are still active.

After 39 years in financial services, including 30 as a professional fund manager, Max took semi-retirement in 2017. Max has been a MoneyWeek columnist since 2016 writing about investment funds and more generally on markets online, plus occasional opinion pieces. He also writes for the Investment Trust Handbook each year and has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and other publications. See here for details of current investments held by Max.